Walking
Earlier this year we moved office, taking my commute from a 25-minute walk twice a day, to an hour twice a day.
I don’t drive (by choice). I don’t feel the need to go anywhere far enough away I couldn’t just walk there, and given my job involves sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours a day, I really don’t want an additional excuse to not move about.
There’s also a part of me going “aside from going to work - what else are you going to use that car for? Cars cost money, you know.”
I actually like walking. It doesn’t really feel like exercise. Years ago I used to regularly walk the Durham Heritage Coast. Though usually not much further than Hawthorn Dene. But at some point I stopped - I don’t know why. Maybe I was just busy a few too many weekends in a row. Maybe it was picking up the viola/cello.
Maps
One thing that stood out to me at the time was how bad Google and Apple maps were for walking routes. Presumably Google and Apple are creating their maps using a combination of satelite imagery, streetview cars (in Google’s case), and geolocation data transmitted by users. Maybe old ordinance survey data. That was years ago - they’re still bad now.
Here’s an example across all three. Apple:
Where’s the paths? Even if you’re basing it on satellite imagery - there’s a big-arse set of steps leading down to the beach clear-as-day. How about Google?
Impressive. Very nice. Let’s see OpenStreetMap:
Look at those paths to the shore. The steps leading down. it even has provisional GPS traces showing a path on the left-hand side. It’s everything it needs to be.
That’s the Standard theme, by the way. There are seven others for you to pick from.
The one downside
I hope the images above illustrate exactly why I donate. It is a little sad they’re considering moving the foundation out of the UK, though I can understand why, given their difficulty with the UK’s exit from the European Union, and the bureaucracy of the Charity Comission. But they do deserve my support (I should really make a post about organisations worth supporting).
With all that said - there is one small issue. Routing. While routing in OpenStreetMap does work well enough to be usable, I found it suboptimal when working out the route I’d take to get to our new office. Manually finding my way on foot, recording as I went, I found Google Maps suggested almost exactly the route I’ve ended up taking. Apple Maps suggested I go via an unlit, notorious-for-car-accidents, path-less road purely because it would be a good thirty minutes faster (they have since updated the route).
OpenStreetMap suggested a workable route, but didn’t consider that there was a ~300ft elevation difference between points, compared to the ~180ft alternative. I’m pretty healthy, but there’s no way to walk downhill both ways.
Applications
For Android, OsmAnd appears to be the standard. It has an iOS port these days. It’s very full-fat. Lots of features and things that I don’t really need (but appreciate nontheless).
Personally, for both iOS and Android, I’d recommend CoMaps. Free (as in freedom, not just cost!), offline, no tracking, no adverts, and developed in the open.
CoMaps is itself a fork of Organic Maps, which has a rocky history when it comes to being free software. It appears Organic Maps attempted to comercialise parts of the project, and the community around it pushed back. The history doesn’t matter much - there’s no reason to pick Organic Maps over CoMaps.