Spent a long day visiting in the Maybury area of Woking. Before going to the pub, I wandered around a few streets and noted addresses and peculiarities. Though some areas of Woking have had houses added, I could find little evidence of addresses. There also did not seem to be any recent local ‘heavy mappers’… In my opinion, it is better to add buildings as approximate shapes with addresses, rather than to spend time drawing the precise shape of each. We are not town planners and, I suspect, that one of the main uses of OSM is for finding location, not for discovering who has a curved bay and who has a sun-lounge, or garden shed??? My general approach is to draw the residential building: if detached house then add address; if semis then draw two attached houses; if more multi then decide between terrace, apartment, or just ‘residential building’ and add address points using interpolation lines where survey or evidence is vague. What more does the User want?

My thanks to All Those who commented on my last diary entry. Yes, my account somehow got set to en-uk instead of en-gb. Also my browser (Firefox) had both ‘GB’ and ‘US’ in ‘preferred language for displaying pages’. That explains why my mapping was switching between ‘postbox’ and mailbox’ etc etc…

Just finished a few map additions in Eastbourne, after a visit. It very much strikes me now, that OSM is becoming too ‘Americanized’ - I go to add a Car Park, and find it’s now a ‘Parking Lot’. Never learnt that in school! I checked my personal settings and they are still en-UK - but I’m getting ‘Mailbox’ (was Postbox); ‘Rowhouses’ (was Terrace); ‘LawOffice’ (was Solicitor); ‘RealEstate Office’ (where are all the Estate Agents?); ‘Subway’ which is a pedestrian underpass, not a part-underground urban railway; use of ‘Store’ for a small Shop; and more - not to mention the omnipresent ‘Trainstation’ (what ever happened to Railway Stations?) and ‘Mall’ (where are all the shopping centres?). I must admit that the Brits do have a problem with ‘Pavement’ but would agree with the suggestion that ‘SidePath’ is more appropriate than the americanese ‘SideWalk’ as many are now used for cycling. I don’t know who is changing our UK version of OSM to join the trendy adoption of Americanese in UK English but Please can we have our language back?

Recently had a delightful narrowboat cruise around the Milton Keynes area (yes the canal route is remarkably green here). When I checked mapping, I found that, a few years ago, much of the towpath had been mapped as ‘bridleway’. Now, canal users did originally use horses to tow their boats but that does not imply any general right of access, unless a towpath has been adopted as a PROW. Most of the UK Canal Network is now controlled by the Canal and River Trust and there are signs to say that pedestrians may use the towpath, while cyclists are ‘permissive’ and horse-riders should seek permission. I assume this applies to all their canals, see https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/enjoy-the-waterways/cycling/cycling-faqs . I would support towpaths being mapped as bicycle = permissive (or yes); foot = yes; highway= footway; operator = Canal and River Trust; towpath = yes - and only designation= if a PROW. Where cycle networks run on towpaths then I’ve seen the use of highway=cycleway etc. Any other views? Maybe https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_waterways needs updating to reflect the available Canal and River Trust policies?

I started a few weeks ago by recording my walk around Woolaston, near Lydney, by path records and adding landuse and hedges from aerial photography. Things got a bit larger scale and I found myself, after a rainy week, ‘approaching’ Bream. I was surprised how little had been added to this area in the last two years - it’s not just the forest that is the attraction of this rural locality, and it deserves more. I found that Bream and adjacent areas still had fixmes apologising for the crudeness of the original area mapping. The Forest of Dean has urban areas, but also extensive semi-rural areas with scattered housing with large gardens. So it is all ‘residential’ or many ‘residential=cottage’ areas with grass lands between? When deciding what to map, I like to think “who are the map users?”. Of course, it’s a database, but I do like to think that a glance at a rendered map would give a prospective visitor a ‘first impression’ of the landscape. A few comments:– (1) Rights of Way: Short of visiting every footpath, I would welcome anyone else’s sources of useable Rights of Way data (I looked at Strava but a lot of walking routes went across private land!); (2) One slight drawback I have noticed is that ‘Meadows’ render on the Cycle Map, but not ‘Farmland’ - possibly something needs to be resolved here… As usual, please add any appropriate additions/amendments that might arise… This was just my contribution.

Visited this lovely area some time ago and found not much detail, with few recent additions. I do like to ‘paint’ an area with landuse detail, as well as investigating roads, signs, and paths. As a map follower (rather than a sat-nav servant), I do like “the path starts just north of the wood and runs along east of the hedge to pass on the west side of a house”. Yes, my additions do stand out in a rather basic-mapped area, but I do look to when most of the UK becomes more clearly mapped. I think I have not trodden on anyone’s toes, but feel free to comment or amend. I follow a rural mapping philosophy of “it’s woodland or farmland” unless there is aerial view evidence of ‘meadow’ eg horsiculture, or worn/irregular grass or hillside etc. Note, after advice, I map large grounds around large rural houses as private garden (not park).

Had a visit to this charming village. Don’t want to tread on any local mappers toes… but did add some landuse and houses - up to usual standards, I hope. A few thoughts: - always a problem with farmland/meadow: I tend to look for ploughing lines on farmland and worn paths + trees on meadows. - there are a lot of ‘little manors’ here: at what point does the ‘residential area’ end and the ‘private park’ begin??? - if a major road has wide verges each side, I would map a ‘grass’ area hedge-to-hedge and this should render OK with the rendered highway on top of the grass. - should take someone a day to review all the buildings as ‘houses’, or not, and possibly add some addresses ;-)

Just doing landuse around Llangollen Canal - this is an area where lots of people go and it is good to map the type of landuse that they will be entering…. Found that canal bridges are either numbered as bridge_ref OR bridge:ref - I found that the latter is preferred (even though that are more of the former…) https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:bridge#The_building_number

Went along the Llangollen Canal this year and surprised that there was very little landuse on OSM. Based on memory and aerial photo, I am working my way from Llangollen to Ellesmere. Perhaps this will inspire more to visit! On the Farmland/Meadow issue, I tend to map according to ground colour. I follow those who think that Farmland is crops and Meadow is for grazing. meadow could be ploughed. If you can see worn tracks, lots of individual trees, growth variation, or steep slopes, then it’s probably meadow. Still waiting for someone to come up with a rendering for Fell….