At the beginning of the week I sent my BlueNext GPS receiver to my friend. He wanted to try it before getting one for himself. He got it, tried it, kept it.
It was easier for me to just buy another one and have him pay me rather than ship the other one back.
I ordered a replacement on Wednesday night and received the GPS unit on Friday.
Today I went out for what was intended to be a reasonable cycle ride.
I cycled from Bracknell to Ascot. The racecourse in Ascot is a prominent landmark on any map, on OpenStreetMap it was just a blank space. Now it's a blank space but with the outline of the course itself. There's a service road that runs around the inside of the track. On race meets this track is used by camera vehicles.
After cycling to and around the Ascot Racecourse I then cycled down to Virginia Waters. For those of you that are Harry Potter fans, Virginia waters is used for a lot of the woodland sets for the films.
From Virginia Waters I cycled along the London Road to Sunning Hill and cut up into Swinley Forest.
Getting lost and bogged down in parts of the forest I eventually headed back home to Bracknell.
On uploading the various GPS data files I found that the system had dropped in a couple of places.
I realise now that the phone does not like to run GPS Java software and shoot video. Next time I'll stop the tracking, shoot the video then re-start.
All in all, my cycle ride turned out to be 28 miles. I estimate that the "short cuts" where the data is missing would actually add another couple of miles, making it 30 miles.
Now the bath is calling me.