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As a break from mapping my home town of Cramlington, I uploaded a short trace made aboard my canal boat cruising the Grand Union Canal.

Navigating a 57" (17m) boat along a narrow waterway is actually not that difficult as the typical speed is a mere 4mph (6km/h) and after 150 years of development, most hazards have been resolved. Although the UK canal network extends throughout country, a typical day's cruising may only encounter a junction every few days.

So, if navigational hazard avoidance and routing are easy peasy, what role is there for digital mapping and GPS?

Well, canals were planned in the 18th Century when roads were terrible and many towns did not exist. What may have been a busy coal mine wharf has been forgotten and is now the middle of nowhere. The feeling of traveling along a secret route is one of the main charms of canals, except when you run out of toothpaste need to find a shop on foot!

Mass market GPS navigation devices have useful Points of Interest, but usually omit waterways and public footpaths to concentrate solely on roads. Other digital maps may include canals, but exclude details such as bridges and locks which are used as reference points.

The ability to add domain specific features to the OSM map and then render the result for your needs is a killer feature, and one that got me started mapping cycle routes in Cramlington.

My short trace around Blisworth Tunnel on the Grand Union Canal was limited to half an hour by the the rainy weather rather than the capacity of my Nokia N800, but logging once a second at 4mph gives impressively dense data points.

The current canal data is missing several sections from Norton Junction to Wedon Bec, but it's good to see that one of the best pubs I visited is mapped. The Narrow Boat on the A5 (Watling Street) is included, along with amenities such as pharmacies in nearby towns.

See full entry

Location: Nether Heyford, West Northamptonshire, England, United Kingdom
Posted by Steve Chilton on 27 April 2008 in English.

Used output from the Export Tab for real today. Three strip maps of areas already mapped. Scaled to 1:15,000, saved as PDF and then printed at A4 (fit to page). Results are dead crisp and brilliant for subsequent micro-mapping of some details round Pickets Lock - the actual lock, not the stadium - then up the Lea Navigation towpath.
Now if only I can get waterproof paper to feed through my printer I would be able to read my annotations better - after being caught in drizzle for ages when out mapping!
Originally I thought the fact that the orangey selection box stayed there when you zoomed was annoying. Now realise it is so useful when patching a series of slight overlays together in this way.

Second trip to Saffron Walden on Friday. Completed the whole east side of the town and a swathe across the south. One more trip will complete the remaining south central and south-west parts of the town. Hopefully there'll be some time over to go back via Strethall and Elmdon and fill in that missing section of the ridge between SW and Royston (though they are such small villages, most of it is done already from NPE).

Started out from Linton and biked down the B road through Hadstock and Little Walden collecting details on the way, so this trip also significantly extends coverage south eastwards into Essex.

Plagued by wind noise on my microphone, so I missed one or two street names in SW which I'll have to go back to - unfortunately both in opposite extremities of the town.

Location: Saffron Walden, Uttlesford, Essex, England, United Kingdom
Posted by Nuno José on 27 April 2008 in English.

Hoje puz uma data de registos no servidor, vai me permitir fazer o IP desde o Algarve até Alpalhão mais umas coisas no alto alentejo e outros no litoral alentejano.

Também um track da N125. Espero ter a 125 até ao final de Maio.

Para a semana que estou de férias vou então dar a cenhecer o projecto ao IGP e ver se nos disponibilizam as fotos seria muito bom pricipalmente para o interior.

Posted by TomH on 27 April 2008 in English.

On my way to Wakefield on Friday I discovered that the A1/A57 junction between Worksop and Retford is now open in it's new, grade separated form.

So on the way back last night I carefully orbited the roundabouts and got new traces and I've now provisionally rebuilt it in it's new form. We still need a trace for the southbound off slip from the A1 and the new northbound carriageway of the A1 (what I have put in is a guesstimate based on the new southbound carriageway that somebody had already captured).

Somebody also needs to work out what has happened to the B6420, which used to terminate on the A1 about where the southbound on slip now merges with it, so the B road has presumably been realigned, possibly to terminate on the eastern half of the new junction although I didn't notice a road coming in there.

Location: Morton Hall, Babworth, Ranby, Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England, DN22 8HW, United Kingdom
Posted by Langlaeufer on 26 April 2008 in English.

What happend to the edit option of the gps traces?
The first time I used it, the map zoom to the track in edit mode and the whole track was shown in the map.
Since some days when i use the edit option of a track, the map centers in the pacific ocean and no track is displayed.
This is not a problem of my tracks, I tried it already with tracks form others.
The tacks in the database work fine.

Posted by photohiker on 26 April 2008 in English.

Started at Eagle On the Hill today, next to the old Bullock Track. We completed section 2 in the rain, but it was before lunch, so we pressed on and completed section 3 in light rain. Good walking. Saw a few Koalas and Captain Giles' Ruins along the way. GPS track is up and mapped.

Does anyone know what to do when a walking track follows an existing street or way for a bit? I don't know whether to run parralel to the existing way, or to finish the section there and pick up the trail where it takes off on it's own again...

Michael

Posted by corrados on 26 April 2008 in English.

I do not like "Copyright Easter Eggs" (http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=287) because they do not suit the idea of a community project like Openstreetmap in my opinion.

I would actually LIKE to see commercial providers of maps making use of Openstreetmap because that makes me proud. Ask yourself: when you go out and collect data for Openstreetmap, is it your intention to make money out of it? That is definitely not my intention. What I would like to see is that my work is actually of use for somebody (even if it is a commercial company). As I said before, THIS makes me proud.