OpenStreetMap
Just spent a weekend in the New Forest (Sandy Balls) on a running club training weekend - sadly only coaching for me. Managed to sneak out and do some mapping on both bays. Firstly tidied up, named and added some features to minor roads south of the site. Saw plenty of the handsome ponies and sadly a dead badger. Asked some MTBers if a track they were on was legal or not and they meekly said "no, but looked a good un to have a go at". Also mapped the whole of the residential eastern side of Fordingbridge - some fabulously wealthy looking properties, in marked contrast to some areas I have been mapping recently in London, with the usual long stares from lawn trimmers and car washers as one goes into "their" dead end roads. Quite a bit more for someone to do in the north and centre, including more POIs. But really good to be out in the sunshine collecting GPS tracks in the raw for a change. Still on a vain mission to generate enough GPS points to make the top 50 on the stats (last entry is now 1.36 million). Suspect I spend too much time NPE tracing, which doesn't count - for that particular chase to ever be realised.
Discussion
Comment from Biogenesis_ on 17 March 2009 at 10:32
It's weird how people stare sometimes.
Once I was mapping a very small coastal town called Port Albert in Victoria, Australia. Some guy who looked to be in his mid-60's flagged me down and gave me a stack of advice about how the street we were on stopped at a swamp/wetland but the name continued on the other side etc.
I just told him I was exploring, probably should have mentioned OSM but being an indoor nerd didn't have the guts :p.
Comment from Steve Chilton on 17 March 2009 at 11:31
I have several possible responses, depending on the circumstances and my mood at the time. It could be a) if they seem interested in the "why" to evangalise about OSM and what they could do for it, b) if they just see "surveyor" I sometimes give out the old "you have not heard the new bypass is planned to come through here then?" line, or c) if they are just staring and want you off their manor ASAP I usually keep stumm and do the necessary and move on. One of funniest was when filming a scene for the OSM video in Brum with Nick and Tom Black (whatever happened to that?) and someone came out of his house to ask what we were doing - seeing bike, GPS, map notes, etc. Explained it all, and then he said "Oh, I work for the AA" (one of main map publishers in UK)!
Comment from njd27 on 17 March 2009 at 11:46
Small world - we were cycling round Sandy Balls last Wednesday evening, as it happens!
The bylaws say that you are only meant to cycle in the New Forest on the waymarked routes (on the gravel tracks). But erosion is generally caused by ponies and water rather than cyclists, so that's unlikely to be a problem: and there's plenty of space, it's not like the problem of meeting dog walkers and stiles on a narrow country footpath through fields.
Comment from RRover on 17 March 2009 at 23:04
If you do your tracking in the "raw" you get plenty of attention. Try putting clothes on before you are off tracking. The worst I have come across was an elderly women in a car with a couple of kids. They, by co-incidence , were travelling the same roads as I was tracking and she thought I was stalking her. She ended up threatening me with her mobile phone. I think she was about to ring the police. I shrugged at her and went in the opposite direction. She turned up again 3 streets later. I went home.