walkingroutes.ie

jkforde

just starting using this site - www.walkingroutes.ie - imho seems way easier to use than mountainviews and a nice way to backup routes via gpx and to share routes with other users. anyone else on here use it? (I've nothing to do with the ownership of the site, just want to see if the community on there is going to grow at all, it seems fairly limited at the moment!)

Alun

Created by a boardsie ...

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056357563

jkforde

jkforde wrote: »

imho seems way easier to use than mountainviews

Since mv rejigged its interface, not sure how it could be any easier. You zoom in on an area, you click on mountains, routes, whatever, there are over 500 tracks uploaded etc. etc.

jkforde

Deleted User wrote: »

Since mv rejigged its interface, not sure how it could be any easier. You zoom in on an area, you click on mountains, routes, whatever, there are over 500 tracks uploaded etc. etc.

ok, the rejigging did help but i still just find the interface unintuitive & clumsy for modern day standards - feels like a mid-90s UI... just my 2 cents...

and mods, you can merge this thread with the older one if ye want, i wasn't aware insideman is a boardsie!

Alun

jkforde wrote: »

ok, the rejigging did help but i still just find the interface unintuitive & clumsy for modern day standards - feels like a mid-90s UI... just my 2 cents... !

I agree, the mapping side of things is much better now (wouldn't be difficult), but the rest still feels very dated.

BarryD

Dare say these sites are a good way to share general ideas on routes - not entirely convinced that you should rely on downloading a gpx file and try to follow it on the ground though. I'd imagine the quality of these varies a lot. I randomly picked two walks on the above site where I know the ground well - the Blackstairs gpx file wouldn't download but I can see it's more or less probably right looking at online map, though start is tricky and shown badly. The Keadeen gpx file I could download but I reckon if you tried to follow this, you'd be ploughing up through conifer forest and clear fell. I suspect the author followed the forest roads some distance west but the gps file certainly doesn't reflect that.

Ideally you'd carry a GPS device with you on a walk and record/ track the route as you go along - fairly straightforward idea but ...
The problem, if there is one, is that the person recording has to be careful to switch the unit on at the start, follow the walk exactly and switch it off at the end. The unit tracks everywhere you go, so if you wander 20-30 metres off route to take a pee or whatever, that detour will be faithfully recorded, likewise if you forget to switch it off until you get back to the pub afterwards and so on. You can of course, edit the gps track afterwards, cut bits out and join up sections etc but that's getting beyond the patience or capability of most ordinary folk.

jkforde

BarryD wrote: »

Ideally you'd carry a GPS device with you on a walk and record/ track the route as you go along - fairly straightforward idea but ... The problem, if there is one, is that the person recording has to be careful to switch the unit on at the start, follow the walk exactly and switch it off at the end. The unit tracks everywhere you go, so if you wander 20-30 metres off route to take a pee or whatever, that detour will be faithfully recorded, likewise if you forget to switch it off until you get back to the pub afterwards and so on. You can of course, edit the gps track afterwards, cut bits out and join up sections etc but that's getting beyond the patience or capability of most ordinary folk.

yeah, but ordinary folk aren't going to bother exporting to gpx and creating accounts on these sites, it's the geeky walkers that'll bother and it's those people that I trust! I usually check the number of waypoints & proximity of the waypoints in a potential route, the higher the numbers means a carefully followed track and not just a reposting of someone else's route (excluding pee spikes which can be as easily spotted as yellow snow! )

BarryD

Yes if you know what to look for, it's usually easy to spot a gpx file that's likely to have been recorded by an actual walker carrying a GPS tracking device as opposed to one generated from a sketch of the route made on a screen. But the uninitiated might think they're all the same and try to follow the latter, which mightn't always be the wisest idea

Theinsideman

Hello folks,

just in case your interested I've released an Android app (4.0 and above) for WalkingRoutes.ie.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.walkingroutes.beta01

Thargor

Theinsideman wrote: »

Hello folks,

just in case your interested I've released an Android app (4.0 and above) for WalkingRoutes.ie.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.walkingroutes.beta01

Exactly what I was looking for, thanks a million Insideman.