Yesterday marked three years from my first OSM changeset. Not long after starting mapping I set myself the objective of adding enough data to be able to make a good walking map of the Southern part of the Peak District National Park in three years. The main objectives were to survey and add all the remaining public rights of way (PROW) (footpaths & bridleways) and also to add all the field boundaries. When I started there was reasonable PROW coverage in some areas and virtually no field boundaries.

To put this objective into perspective there are, according to the National Park figures, 3510 PROWs in the park covering 1867 miless and 5440 mile of dry stone walls within the park. There are also good number of fences and hedges so the lenght of field boundaries to be mapped is probably half as much again.

I’m afraid to say I have failed to achieve the objectives in the three years I set myself.

The above gives a representation of what has been mapped to date. I was hoping to have achieved single figures for the PROWs but it stands at around 20. In retrospect it was a mistake to have a target for achieving the objective in the middle of the UK winter. The weather and short daylight hours have certainly been against me. It is also proving quite time consuming to pick off the last few footpaths. Parking is often problematic so you end up walking several times the length of the footpath just to survey it and get the gps trace. Survey is also not that efficient when trying to cover new footpaths. I’ve walked almost 1500 miles in the last 3 years but probably only mapped a quarter of this in new footpaths.

Field boundary coverage it quite good along all the footpaths that have been mapped. There are still a few empty patches. Some of this is moorland without field boundaries. Other areas don’t have any footpaths so they have been the last on the list to map.

After initial experimentation with note taking, voice mapping I became an avid photo mapper. I use to take a few composed pictures but this was time consuming and you could almost guarantee you hadn’t taken a picture of something when it came to editing. I now don’t stop to take pictures but just shoot several picture is an arc at regular intervals. I seem to have amassed 378,099 pictures to date! They have certainly made editing in JOSM much easier and hopefully more accurate and detailed. Editing has generally taken up more time than surveying.

With luck I will complete the above objectives for the Southern Peak District National Park in the new few months and is should be possible to produce, with the addition of contours, an alternative walking map for this area. It is then on to the Northern Peak District. Although it covers a larger area, large parts are moorland so the actual number of field boundaires is probably less. I was hoping to do this in another two years but logistically it is more difficult and surveying will have to be limited to the summer months.

The Peak District is a good place to go walking so hopefully this work will prove useful.

Dudley

For anyone visiting the North of Kefalonia there are now three hiking trails that have recently been developed starting from Fiskardo. There are several map information boards in the town (drawn over Google Satellite Imagery) and a descriptive information leaflet (English/Greek) available locally (but no map). All the routes are “currently” well marked. On a recent visit I walked all three trails: 1) The Lighthouse Trail, 2) The Cypress Trail and 3) The Battery Trail and these now all mapped with route relations. The following link provides a summary map.

I’ve also put on the path that is an alternative route up to the castle at Assos. It skirts the cliffs as the southern end of the fort. It is a bit exposed in places and best avoided if you suffer from vertigo! Assos Castle path

Today is the anniversary of my first changeset, according to http://www.hdyc.neis-one.org/, so I thought I’d write my first diary article. I’ve spent most of my time mapping in the Peak District National Park in the UK and I thought it would be good to produce an image of this as a record of progress to date. The image below was produced with Maperative and I wanted to have it as a record of the progress made in mapping field boundaries, so these have been highlighted. Paths and tracks are also marked. Unfortunately I didn’t know how to produce such a record when I first started so it is difficult to know how the map has actually changed but my general impression was that there were very few field boundaries mapped a year ago in this area. The image only covers the SE part of the Peak Park as this is where I have been concentrating my mapping activities to date.

Sometimes it has felt like a very daunting task and looking at this there are still a large number of white areas, where there are no field boundaries mapped to date. It will be interesting to see how it looks in a year’s time. It is a bit of thankless task mapping so I would like to thank those that had already added many maps features in this area and continue to do so. If you hadn’t I wouldn’t have put an OSM map on my Garmin GPS and then found it wasn’t as detailed as I’d have liked. So your work has inspired the above. Hopefully it will inspire others to add more field boundaries this summer so we can produce a really good walking map of the Peak District National Park.