Traveling and exploring is wonderful. I’m sure you will enjoy your travels. It would be good to hear and share your adventures, when you can get access to the net. I would imagine that you see will lots of stuff that could be mapped, hopefully you can record Jpegs, write notes and record some gpx files for mapping later. Bon Voyage! thanks for posting in English as well…. i sometimes use Google Translate which seems ok but how can i be sure!

We had an outside toilet in 38 Cambridge Villas Godmanchester Cambs while i lived there 1949 to 55. Once a week, during the early hours 5 or 6am the night soil cart would do it’s round and the collectors would lift the 30kg possibly too full, Bucket carry it to the truck and tip it in. Most Men and Boys would pee into the outside drain by the kitchen window to avoid over filling the bucket. The seat was a flat square of pine boards that were polished by many bums on seats, the seats were hinged to cover the bucket. Every few days a nail would be driven through a new batch of squares of torn news paper then into the door frame. I haven’t seen a Double seat version but they did and do exist, Aah TRUE LOVE. Clive James Australian/British writer wrote of remembering the sound of the dunny man ( Ozzy slang) falling with bucket “not a bit missed him” .

For a few months in the summer of 1965 i laboured for the OS, I chiseled three of four BMs, one i remember was in blue railway brick which was/is as hard as concrete. I think you mentioned Staffordshire Bricks before. The Level Scope had three cross hairs and the 8 foot ?? staff was read to .01 foot about 3mm. The difference between top and bottom crosshairs was 1/100th the distance from it, this allowed the forward and back readings to be kept as similar as possible to cancel errors in the spirit level. I was supposed pace up to the instrument then pace onward the same amount, I often miscounted and was called in or out, but for many many years after leaving the OS I would still occasionally find myself counting paces! Keep up the good work.

Alex this and a couple of others i’ve mapped render. osm.org/#map=19/52.32893/-0.20735

I enjoy your entries Alex see this https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/46513/tag-for-flood-relief-holes

Opps. they do render if they are tagged correctly see osm.org/#map=16/52.2599/-0.1946

I mapped a group of wind turbines using a system of waypoints that were on projected lines from pairs of aligned turbines which was fairly accurate when checked against a commercial map. I used this method as i couldn’t get nearer than 1.5 km to most of them. But the only turbine that gets rendered is the node of the centre of the wind farm, which isn’t a turbine. I’m a little annoyed as 123m high landmarks, should, i think, be rendered.

Thanks, I printed out your instructions and on the next rainy day i’ll try them out. I like the pre-built routable osm on garmin maps i have installed on my Garmin Oregon 450. I can get suggested hiking routes which give me estimated time of arrivals and distances using suitable tracks and paths, for a bike it picks cycle routes, and for a car it obeys turn restrictions ( if we have mapped them correctly). I would like to change the rendering a little, so the background is mainly white and walking rights of way render green. The paths will then be a familiar colour and should have better contrast. These modifications, will I am hoping, print out clearly without using a lot of ink. I intend to use Garmin Basecamp for route plotting and printing. The standard renderings on the main page don’t really work for me, fine dotted red footpaths on brown rendered farmland is not clear unless I zoom in, zoomed out screen grabs aren’t clear at all. Happy Mapping, and walking.

You may have seen this www.rowmaps.com . Barry Cornelius as approached County Councils for for rights of way traces under the freedom of information act, with about 50% success. Huntingdon, my base, is in Cambridgeshire and along with Northamptonshire another area that i enjoy walking in, have both decided to withhold the data. I have been uploading traces for a few years now and then mapping the footpaths i have walked. I have mapped some new estates without bing, initially as building sites polygons, new sites can be hard to find so i like to map them to help everyone, then by using gps and a sketch pad i’ll do sketch road plan then ask a the sales site office for the street names so i can plot them out and name them. I enjoy reading the diary items thanks for yours.

Walking may be too slow for some but walking with a notebook, a camera and a gps is the best. Bing in some areas is excellent but it is impossible to tell if some paths and roads are actually connected. does that walk way join two roads? is the road a cul de sac or not? While you are doing that you will get some fresh air and exercise, meet some lovely people and see some interesting things. Arm chair mapping is ok but only after you have been on the ground. You will also have a GPX trace that can be used to check Bing alignment. Happy Mapping.

If you want to cycle Cambridge you could park here, it free, at the moment. http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cyclists-verdict-Cambridge-s-CyclePoint-UK-s/story-28739011-detail/story.html?

I’m sure you know that openstreetmap use minus values of lat and long for West of zero (Greenwich Meridian) and South of the Equator. On my Garmin menu: Where to: Coordinates then format= h ddd.ddd not ddd mmm.mmm or ddd mmm sss. then enter minus lats as South Negative- longitudes as West. I like the fact you are using cheap but good old kit. If i see old stuff for sale i do a quick bit of internet research including finding the makers PDF. i recently started using a five year old laptop that was e2000 when new and then had a 3 year makers guarantee, which gives some indication of build quality. Happy mapping and recycling.

Here is the link http://pinns.co.uk/osm/

If the map is routable but searching does not work, i do this on my nuvi 1310T. It will navigate to a lat lon, you may have to set your Nuvi to DD.ddd instead of DMS, you can then use the openstreetmap map page for searching, the centre co ords of the map in shown in the URL, put that into your Nuvi, I hope that helps. I have been looking at the pinns website that explains how typ files change the look of Garmin maps.

What Garmin device are you using? if i have a similar model i’ll see if i can get it to work. I thought that that function was for turns when following a plotted route but maybe it is suitable for other uses.

It is hard to remember mapping with just GPX traces. Bing was, and is, the most useful tool in the box, but keep uploading traces so we can all check alignment, we should also consider that images may be a few years old so survey as well. I say a big thanks to Steve Coast and to Microsoft Bing for what was a massive step forward for openstreetmap.

Thanks Escada I have read and enjoyed some of your other diary entries and I have just looked and see that you have written many before, I will look at them when the weather is less suitable for walking and mapping. Thanks

Although it sounds like a good idea I don’t think it is. Much better to upload your trace and use that together with the other available traces to get the best average to align Bing and use that to draw your road. I my experience traces have lots of small zig zags and other faults that are best left out. Even without Bing then I’d still draw the roads with human input. This is what we did before Ariel became available, it’s hard to imagine now! happy mapping.

related @andy%20mackey/diary

I wrote a similar diary entry and also asked a question in the forum. I wrote a few emails and after quite a while I received a positive reply and they added an OSM attribution to the map.see https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/30167/osm-map-used-without-any-copyright-notice