barrieu: out in the countryside I generally avoid looking at other maps to avoid "contaminating" my brain with preconceived ideas about the paths. Otherwise I do sometimes get into "Would I have figured it out if I hadn't seen an existing map?" which makes it harder work to remember what I /really/ saw on the ground.

Mapping the path first and comparing to an existing map if necessary works for me but I understand it's different where you are. I'm fortunate in being around fairly well signposted (relatively) tracks but even so I sometimes lose the thread. I often find it can help considerably when a path is ambiguous to go find the other end and backtrack.

Aside from the path route itself, which I generally figure out from what I see on the ground, I also have to figure out what kind of Right of Way it is. For this I generally look for signs - these's usually one *somewhere* along the route that I can use. And if there isn't a sign then I think OSM recommended policy is to choose the lowest it could possibly be e.g. footway (and make a note against the way, perhaps). If you can only get the type-of-way from a restricted copyrighted map, then I think the consensus is that's not usable (annoyingly)? I've been wondering if it's legitimate to double-check these with the local council's definitive map but I'm not actually sure if I can since I guess it make be based on OS data...

To be honest, it sounds like all the paths you're seeing could be useful, unless some of them are legally / physically unpassable. Does the area have specific rights of way, or is there a general right to roam? In the former case, I'm disappointed they're not better signposted :-( but in the latter case, I guess any paths that are there could be useful to someone :-)

I certainly understand your eagerness not to stray too far off the path though; aside from the risk of getting lost, I have had an "interesting" encounter with an unfriendly farmer this year and I'm not keen to repeated it!

I map footpaths and local roads by bicycle - I sometimes have to schedule a long ride just to get to the area where mapping is to be done. It's slow work but it's satisfying and give me an opportunity to explore and exercise. If I had a car or (probably better) motorbike I would use that for some of the on-road work to extend my range and improve the rate of mapping.

This obviously works best in areas where there is a population centre somewhere vaguely near some unmapped countryside. In places that are sparsely populated and / or that are harder to get around (e.g. Cornwall, Scotland, Wales...) this strategy is going to take longer due to lower density of OSMers and harder work on the ground.

The NPE maps (http://www.npemap.org.uk) are useful too, you can get them as a layer in Potlatch or JOSM and use them to trace over roads you know to still exist. The data isn't as accurate as GPSing but it's not too bad either in my experience. For some data (e.g. obscure place / feature names) it's sometimes the only available source for us to use. We do need to know that the roads in question still exist on the old route before doing this, however. It's ideally best to get them surveyed in person at some point but marking source=npe allows people to do that in future.

It's not ideal that the Yahoo coverage is patchy, it does accelerate mapping a lot. Another thing it's useful for in rural areas is marking out farmyards, field boundaries, etc in areas which are not directly accessible by public rights of way. I've been meaning to do some of this kind of stuff using compass bearings but that's significantly more complicated work than normal GPS-ing...

That's awesome! Brilliant work. How far out did you go - any of the surrounding suburbs / villages?

I'm continuing my attempt to map all the businesses on all the streets I typically visit but at the moment this is mostly useful just for the namefinder, since they're generally not rendered. Plus, it's tricky categorising some of them.

It's just really great to have restaurants filled in completely. It makes it all so much more useful to know I can just search for random restaurants I'm meeting people at; also makes it better for giving people directions. You must have worked really intensively to get everything mapped so quickly - I know from experience how tedious it is mapping features along a street like that.

There's some information here on getting OSM maps onto Garmin GPS units. As far as I know, not all the maps there are routable (i.e. you can't get the Garmin to plan routes with them, it just shows where you are).

osm.wiki/index.php/OSM_Map_On_Garmin

There also seems to have been some work on making routable maps work, here for example:
http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=1162

My Garmin handheld GPS doesn't have enough memory for me to fit any meaningful-sized map on :-(

> Err, the name of the town seems to have changed from "Somersham" to "Somersham (in
> progress)". Seems like a weird thing to do to me... :-/

I was following the example currently used nearby for suburbs of St Ives / Huntingdon (at one point I think this might have been done for the whole town, before they became more complete). I guess I don't have to do it that way but it makes it clear that the current mapping is (highly) incomplete. Hopefully it won't be in progress for very long, depending on when I next get out there. I'll update the wiki page too.

Nice work there! I've not been down to that area much but in the future I might enjoy riding some of the paths you're finding :-)

Nice work, David! I can't believe how quickly you've got through it all! Awesome stuff, just awesome.

Really chilly weather for surveying although on the freezing-but-clear days it's actually rather nice (if you have enough to wear!). I get aches and pains in my ears and fingers unless I keep them covered in a cold wind. The most annoying thing is that I keep having to add and remove layers of clothes, depending on whether I'm walking, cycling, or stopped for some reason.

The rainy days are the worst, though, since I find the damp (and the mud) so depressing.

Well done; I'd been meaning to take a look at the village but hadn't got round to it due to various distractions. Any idea if "Toseland" (SW-ish of there) is a real village or just a named locality? Thanks for stubbing out the footpaths / bridleways; having stubs makes it much easier to see where further mapping is needed.

Did you know they have a good website for Papworth St Agnes? http://www.papworthstagnes.org.uk/

There is a little historical geographical info that could maybe be a little useful (esp under appropriate copyright, if they were agreeable) on there.

In a related vein, I was thinking of e-mailing the website contact for Eltisley to just say "Hey, you're on our map!" - had you considered doing that for PSA?

Anyhow, nice work. Cambridgeshire is getting to be amazingly well mapped.

Cheers,
Mark

Hey Ickogg,

Welcome to OSM and the Cambridge OSMers in particular. I've been doing work on footpaths and bridleways around Cambridge but mainly to the West, so far.

Last time I went to the Roman Road I didn't have a GPS so I wasn't able to contribute any data from that (although I did recently manage to add "Mark's Grave" from the NPE map - if you look at my username, you'll understand why I was nervous about visiting that site ;-) Other interesting paths in the East include the Fleam Dyke (not really bike-able nor necessarily a ROW for bikes for much of its length - a mountain bike would help but still probably be tough going) and decommissioned railway coming out of Fen Ditton - no rails, just a long straight road through farmland (punctuated in the middle by some houses with a small train station in their back garden!).

I see you like to work alone, which I definitely understand. Nevertheless if you ever change your mind, feel free to get in touch. I usually go mapping with a non-mapping friend, who comes along for the exploration and the exercise.

Feel free to edit the wiki pages to describe what you're doing; we could really put a Cambridge/Rights Of Way page up (or somesuch) to describe the completeness of footpath / bridleway mapping. A Cambridge mailing list / forum would be awesome though, particularly given the sheer number of mappers building up in their area though; seem to be lots of people joining in now!

Good luck getting useful information out of the council. The situation with OS is pretty dubious in this country, since councils provide the OS with data, then the OS sells proper maps back to them. Any idea what the copyright status is for the maps in Shire Hall? I had thought about checking them out but I assumed that there might be copyright issues in deriving data from it (e.g. with taking ROW types from those maps as opposed to inferring them from signposts in the countryside).

Good luck with the mapping, anyhow.

Cheers,
Mark

Nice work fluffhouse (I like your user name, by the way!).

It's good to see some more mapping in Cambridge going on! Cambridge has some of the best OSM coverage there is and it's getting even better. Local details like you added are incredibly easy to miss when the basic streets are already mapped, so I congratulate you on finding and fixing these details!

If you're mapping around Cambridge and would like some company, please let me know. Myself and a friend have regular (often several times a week) cycling / walking expeditions into the Cambridgeshire countryside in order to map footways, bridleways, etc.

I've also been mapping bus stops within and around Cambridge, pedestrian crossings, telephone boxes - most of these features aren't yet covered since (aside from the bus stops) they don't appear on the map. Hopefully they will do at some point, so they're useful information to collect. There's lots still to do here...

We're starting to make a list of further tasks (beyond the streetmapping done so far) at the bottom of the wiki page for Cambridge: osm.wiki/index.php/Cambridge

Have fun mapping!

Cheers,
Mark

Hi Paul,

Welcome to mapping and to Cambridge mapping in particular!

Well done on checking out Little Shelford - I had been wondering what was still to be done there so it's good to have it crossed off the list. Nice one on Croxton, myself and a friend recently popped out and did Eltisley, which is nearby - I think there'd some been tracing from the NPE maps there already, perhaps it was you?

We've been working on the footways, bridleways, bus stops, telephone boxes, etc around Cambridge - particularly the to the west of the city, since that's most convenient and familar to us. I've also recently been working on mapping the power lines around Cambridge, since they're good detail as landmarks... I'm going to start trying to take bearings of the direction of power lines where they cross the road, since it's not always possible to get decent satellite coverage of them.

If you fancy going on a mapping trip with other people, please let me know. My self and my usual accomplice typically bicycle out for Cambs city centre and have a fairly long range - Eltisley is the furthest West we've mapped so far but we took a long route to get there.

Hope you enjoy working on the map as much as we do, it's a great hobby and the Cambridge coverage is some of the better OSM coverage in the country / world, as far as I'm aware!

Cheers,
Mark

I've been using a Garmin GPS60 (not to be confused with the GPSmap 60, which is a different model), which cost me maybe a bit over £100. The other main option I looked at was an £80 Garmin eTrex. The eTrex model in question had, according to the chap in the shop, a more sensitive receiver chip - but the difference here was supposed to be mitigated by the larger antenna on the GPS60. Also, the GPS60's antenna works at different orientations whereas the eTrex needed holding face up for its antenna to work correctly.

A big difference for me, though, was the cabling. The GPS60 supports USB directly, using a standard cable. The eTrex I was looking at used RS232 serial through a non-standard connection and did not come with the special cable required. The price of the special cable + an RS232 to USB adaptor ate away most of the price advantage of that eTrex *and* reduced the convenience factor.

On this basis, I bought the GPS60 and have been rather happy with it. It also has a larger screen and more on-device functionality although to be honest I don't make much use of this whilst I'm mapping - not many people falling overboard whilst riding a cycle path. The GPS60 doesn't have much internal memory so you can't put large maps on it, the screen is black and white but has a decent backlight for night work.

I'm using it with Linux using a piece of software called gpsbabel. This is a command-line app, but you can probably get a Mac GUI for it if that's your preference. I'm not sure all features of the device are supported (e.g. I have yet to make uploading routes work right) and I don't think it was on the official "supported" list for the software. Nevertheless, it works OK for dumping out track logs, which is all I really need.

Other nice things about the GPS60: as a hiking GPS it's waterproof, it's fairly solidly built, the battery life is pretty good, the Garmin bike mount is well designed.

One further downside: its appearance makes people think I have a huge, yellow mobile phone.

POHB: I'd also heard about the en-masse stopping up of paths. It seemed to me like something I could do alongside OSM work. I'm not really sure of the procedure though... As far as I can tell we need to:

1) identify where there were historically rights of way (perhaps the NPE map can help with that - for Cambridge there are lots of paths on there that aren't signposted anymore)
2) search the records to see if a stopping-up order was passed on them
3) bring attention to those that haven't been officially removed

This is based on what I knew of the process. I'm sure the Ramblers' Association know more about this, though, so maybe they'd be able to advise!

The opengeodata.org blog came back up so I was able to dig out the growth links that I mentioned earlier:
The OpenGeodata post: http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=309
Progress of OSM maps for the UK: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/30/google_streetview_open_street_map/

I'm not entirely convinced El Reg has the right balance between Yahoo satellite content vs new users and more intensive mapping - but it's certainly true that a good aerial view makes a huge difference. The pics of coverage are very interesting.

As for detail in my own region, it currently stacks up like this:
Google: http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&ll=52.205503,0.12394&spn=0.023118,0.052357&z=15
OSM: osm.org/?lat=52.2041&lon=0.117638&zoom=18
Ordnance Survey: http://getamap.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/getamap/frames.htm?mapAction=gaz&gazName=p&gazString=CAMBRIDGE

The OS is ahead in the detail of mapped private properties, buildings, gardens, etc, although their online interface is a bit nasty! It would be hard to map that level of detail on OSM without improved aerial photos for Cambridge.

Oh and here's the awesome OSM fieldwork project: http://www.pledgebank.com/osmfieldwork

I think you probably are unlucky. There are a number of places in the UK where there are coverage gaps. I would think Wales (as in your example) probably would have the lowest contributor density, so I'm definitely not surprised that's lagging. There were some interesting pictures of OSM's progress in the UK over time but I can't find those at the moment. You'll find that there are some interesting things if you Google around, though... Every so often somebody / some group of people starts mapping an area (often through a "mapping party") and it develops very quickly. This is happening to some towns near me right now. Development often has to wait for this to happen if there's bad aerial photo coverage for that area.

I definitely agree that if you want really *consistent* national coverage then Google or OS is the way to go still (although for many uses, OSM's national coverage is "good enough" already). Locally, OSM can be better for navigation and has the advantage of being reusable for e.g. tourist maps, clubs and societies, etc.

Some important things I thought I'd note though, since they helped me see new angles on OSM's long term viability:
1) There is a motivation for companies (i.e. focused resources and money) to get involved without compromising the project. For instance, GPS *device* manufacturers, online map provides, etc can avoid paying map licensing fees if "good enough" maps are available from OSM. It's in their interest to help out. A navigation company from the Netherlands contributed mapping data for that entire country as well as for some other areas of the world (nb. I don't know exactly what their product is). Freely available map data is also valuable to start-up companies developing new services.
2) OSM can scale similarly to Wikipedia - especially once there's an initial streetmap, random individuals can improve the map fairly easily using local knowledge. *everyone* is an expert on their own area, regardless of qualifications.
3) There's actually a lot of public domain mapping data to be had. The TIGER data sets in the US, out of copyright OS maps in the UK, etc. Some countries of various sizes (the Isle of Man springs to mind) are amenable to providing data that can be used by OSM, if they consider it in their interest.
4) OSM maps features that other mapping projects can't / don't and it can be far more agile about doing so. For instance, OSM includes locations of post boxes, telephone boxes and various other commonly unmapped features. The Ordnance Survey probably has many of these features, at least in their master map, if not in print - but that's limited to the UK. There's an experimental routing service that can plot routes on cycleways / bridleways / footways as well as roads - Google can't do that because it doesn't show those features.
5) OSM is becoming able to stay more up-to-date with new developments than printed maps (where a new print run is required) or online maps with fewer resources.

None of this invalidates what you've said, of course. But I think it does parallel some aspects of e.g. Linux development where it turns out that Open Source makes pragmatic good sense (in terms of scalable development, economic / business benefits, etc) as well as being idealistically attractive.

OSM is also really good fun, even just to edit using Potlatch. Add in the benefits I'm getting in exercise and improved local geography and it really rocks! :-)

Further to what LivingWithDragons said - I live in Cambridge and the data here is genuinely way better than Google's is. No disrespect to gmap intended - they have excellent and *consistent* coverage over much of the world. It's just not as good as OSM in a number of well surveyed areas. I can't take credit for the vast majority of surveying around my home town. I am putting in quite a lot of miles surveying footpaths and bridleways, which leads me to another OSM advantage - OSM includes more map features than Google (though Google tends to have significantly better coverage of shops and businesses).

For not-directly-accessible features like streams there are a number of possible techniques:
* Often you can trace from the Yahoo satellite maps, if available (these are displayed by default in the Potlatch editor and there's a plugin to display them in JOSM. Traces created from them are suitable, license-wise, for OSM).
* Landsat imagery is available for (AFAIK) the whole world and can sometimes help you get an approximate trace. You can display this in JOSM, I don't know about Potlatch.
* npemap.org.uk provides out-of-copyright Ordnance Survey maps (for the UK) which can also be traced, though you have to take care to line them up with existing map data or they come out quite inaccurate.
* Finally, it's possible to connect up streams by more traditional survey techniques: going to crossing points (bridges, etc) and joining them up, taking bearings, triangulation, etc.

Hi David,

Sorry I didn't make it to this one, hopefully I'll be able to attend some future mapping parties, though. The progress that you've made with Bury already looks pretty amazing.

Cheers,
Mark

Congratulations! It's a great feeling to have your edits show up for the first time. Also, the Osmarender tiles update much faster (and you can explicitly ask for updates on tiles if you need to).

There are some tags for disused / abandoned railways. Would any of those be suitable for the stretches you looked at?

Anyhow, nice work on keeping things up-to-date. As a "living document", like wikipedia, OSM should be able to stay more up-to-date than other maps, eventually.

osm.wiki/index.php/New_Popular_Edition

Has instructions on how to realign the NPE layer with the existing ways for more accurate tracing. I've been finding I can locally line up the NPE map with some ways but that there seems to be some "drift" further away from the features I lined up. I've been re-aligning the NPE layer with some features nearby to whatever I'm currently editing in hope that it will minimise the errors introduced.

Sometimes you can use a combination of NPE and satellite maps, or of NPE and surveying in order to maximise the accuracy of the trace and to get names for things. NPE is particularly useful for finding the paths and names of things like streams, which are typically hard to survey.

It's great fun having a real GPS unit, though - it can make you a lot more productive.

Congratulations!

Depending on where you live, you might be able to use local knowledge + the Yahoo satellite maps provided by Potlatch (the online editor) to improve the local maps. When I've not been able to go out GPS-ing I sometimes do this anyhow. Footways, street names, drainage ditches (and other landmarks) bus stops, tracing round the outlines of major buildings - all these things are useful.

Whilst you're waiting for the GPS you might also like to learn a bit about JOSM, which I've found makes full blown surveying + mapping much easier to do once you have a GPS. With the right plugin, you can also overlay out-of-copyright OS maps (if you're in the UK) which can be useful for tracing over (footpaths tend to change over time but rivers and streams can usefully be traced).

When you edit stuff, switch to the Osmarender view (use the "+" sign at the top right of the map view), which updates more regularly. If you want to request part of it to be updated, you can do so here: http://tah.openstreetmap.org/Browse/slippy/

Hope this is useful to you! There's lots to do and lots to learn about. Have fun!