Google has opened up its mapping software for certain areas. It can be a little clunky at times (the list of edits I’ve made isn’t exhaustive, if something is awaiting moderation it cannot be tweaked easily and so on). It’s not always clear what the road classifications are supposed to be - but I’m working on the basis that if I put in a best guess, it can always be tweaked if not quite right.
Nevertheless, it can be fun, as well as useful (I’ve been mapping Iceland, I’ve done a lake, Klerfarvatn, a glacier, and lots of roads concentrating around the Blue Lagoon and Grindav&iaciute;k in the south west). Some of my changes have been accepted immediately, some depend on other changes, and so are pending, and some are in moderation awaiting checking.
Maps are currently editable in a few areas, probably selected for the lack of existing map features, so if the mapping experiment fails, google can delete the mapping info and be back to where they started.
The areas editable right now are: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cyprus, Grenada, Iceland, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles, Pakistan, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Vietnam.
Even changes which are approved take a little while to be rendered and appear on the maps - this is especially true for some large features.
Yesterday I thought I’d take my new bike out for a spin - then I thought about going on a long bike ride.
Then I decided to attempt to cycle into central London from home, and finally I decided to do this on the old bike as I didn’t want to do anything too ambitious on the new bike until I’ve broken it in a bit more.
So it was, that I set out on a ride from home (on the Surrey/Hampshire border) to Central London.
I planned a route with the aid of the Surrey Cycling Maps and the Transport for London cycling maps. Both sets of maps are free. Unfortunately there was something about them which made going from one set of maps to the other tricky for me - I’d love it if the maps were downloadable as jpg so I could use them in OziExplorer - or better still, if the data were handed over to google to allow cycle routes to be planned as easily as road routes!
I worked out a rough route on the paper maps, then used the mapmyride website to store the route electronically. This was then downloaded to my Garmin GPS 60. This is not an expensive device, but it is good enough for my purposes.
Essentially, I can download a route to it, and it will tell me which way to head in order to reach the next waypoint. It doesn’t know about roads, buildings, cliffs and the like - and so the directions are only as good as the route that it has been fed.
Thus it was that I set off.
I had a later start than I hoped for - and was slower than hoped for as I stopped to go to the supermarket for some sustenance (I had forgotten breakfast too!). Getting to Woking took longer than usual, but I was soon in new territory, going past Woking and was at my first major landmark. The psychological barrier of the M25.
It was really great getting to this point under my own steam - for me it is the boundary of London (it isn’t really, but nothing else is that obvious).
I cycled on, through Addlestone, and onward.
Hampton Court provided my next stop. It’s a lovely place to go through, open grassland (and a road, admittedly) - with deer.
The deer were quite used to the cars, and so were not too phased by someone on a bicycle. They were quite bold (for deer) - though never totally unwary.
I crossed the River Thames several times. Having crossed near Hampton Court, I went south of the river again at Teddington Lock. Nice place.
I had chosen to go through Richmond Park as well. This is a lovely place to go through - the paths are smooth, traffic-free and there are herds of deer. The deer are different to Hampton Court - and again, they are relatively used to people. This was a much larger group, and they formed a protective ring around their youngsters.
As I watched and waited, they all moved across the road - that was good to see, it had echoes of ‘mass migration’ about it, but in miniature!
From Richmond, I carried on into central London, thanks to the cycle maps I had very few busy roads to travel. I arrived at Buckingham Palace, and being a Sunday the mall was closed to cars, so I had a lovely cycle down toward wesminster. There was traffic over Westminster Bridge, and then I was at Waterloo, some 69km after I set out.
It was my longest cycle by far so far. I may have cycled further ‘back in the day’ - but then, I never kept track of this sort of thing when younger (I did get lost many times though - though the only time I had to be rescued was when I went for a walk, and I went so far the soles of my shoes caved in!)
My normal commute is about 18km each way, so this represented nearly a fourfold increase on my longest ride (or doubling of my daily ride). I did arrive at Waterloo wondering if I shouldn’t just cycle back home - but felt like this was asking for trouble… however, I think I could have done it. Maybe another day.
My high spot at the end of the ride was cycling down the mall - that was my ‘finish’. Getting to Waterloo was anti-climactic. I’d just done a big ride, and I wanted a finish line - dammit, I wanted a medal for finishing! If I’d have known that Waterloo would’ve felt like ‘the way home after finishing’ instead of ‘finishing’, I’d have done a lap of honour on the Mall!
Anyhow, that was my big ride - about 43 miles. Not bad, I could have gone further, but I was being careful, I didn’t know how I’d react the next day. As it is, I’ve a bit of soreness in my thighs, and that’s about it. I did a few stretches on the train to try and prevent leg muscles cramping up.
Key Details:
Date: 2008-06-29
Distance: 69.8 km.
Speed: 19.24 / 47.33 km/hr (avg/max)
Duration: 03:37 (ride time, stopping for the M25, level crossings, deer and supermarkets not included)
As you know, Prime Ministers are available once a week at Question Time to debate all the issues of the day, and I was disappointed that you chose to step down as a Member of Parliament in advance of Question Time on Wednesday, 11 June rather than coming to the House to debate with me the issues around the use of CCTV and DNA evidence, and the measures we have taken to protect our national security.
Nevertheless, the leader of your party has the opportunity each week to ask six questions on those issues that caused you to leave his Shadow Cabinet. He has had two such opportunities to date, but he has yet to ask any such question. He has two further opportunities to raise these issues before the ‘by-election’ on July 10th, and I am sure that if he shares your strong feelings about them, he will not duck those opportunities.
Thank you for your letter of 26 June. This is the second time you have responded to me directly, since my resignation from the House of Commons in protest at your relentless assault on British liberty.
First, you gave a speech on 17 June at the IPPR, a favoured Labour think-tank, hardly an environment that allows for the vigorous and open debate we so sorely need. Now, you insist that any questions I wish to ask on this vital national issue be raised within the narrow confines of Prime Ministers Questions, where you have developed the novel practice of asking - rather than answering- the questions.
I note from your speech on 17 June that you genuinely believe in the positions you have taken and stand behind the sustained erosion on British liberty, which regrettably means that the country must expect more to come in the future. Equally, it is deeply disturbing how ill-informed you are about the basic effectiveness of your security policies - from 42 days, ID cards and the DNA database, through to the ineffectual deployment of CCTV at immense cost to the taxpayer.
We need a proper national debate on these important matters - not just set piece speeches to carefully choreographed audiences or the weekly one-liners you deploy at PMQs. If you were serious about debating these important issues, you should have put up a candidate or at the very least allowed your Ministers to debate publicly with me. Having cowered from both options, it is a bit rich to snipe from the sidelines in a serious debate that will proceed with or without you. Even at this late stage, I would be only too willing to adjust my schedule to debate you or any Cabinet Minister in public, if you feel able to relax the restrictions currently in place.
Yours sincerely,
David Davis
In short, Brown has said “You lost an opportunity to ‘debate’, but you should have got more support, nah nah ne nah nah.” and Davis is saying “Anytime, Any place, Anywhere - bring it on”.
Spoilers are here. You should click on another article if you want to, but haven’t yet managed to, see the Doctor Who from the 28th June 2008 (BBC1) “The Stolen Earth”.
Unicef have a nice programme at the moment involving bicycles.
For 25 quid, you can buy a bicycle which will be given to a health worker to enable them to travel further to see more villages. This’ll increase access to widwifery, vaccinations and so forth.
One more bicycle has been sent using this scheme, thanks to Copenhagenize for linking to it (though the danish link is currently inoperative). I arrived at their older post on the unicef scheme via their post on Baisikeli.
. This is not an expensive device, but it is good enough for my purposes.
Things that interest me… 
