Thank goodness both Craig and I are in agreement regarding a SatNav - one shall never pass through our domain because we like maps - even though I am so directionally-challenged it is beyond laughable. Getting lost can be fun...
From The Sunday Times
May 24, 2009
Satnav for UK walkers
It is now more or less impossible to get lost in the hills with the latest OS-loaded geeky gadgets
Three long years ago, I purchased a TomTom, and it has been the subject of marital discord ever since.
Every time I whip it out, she says: “Oh, no, please put that thing away.” It doesn’t do anything for a man’s confidence.
Every time there is an article about some fool who drove his brand-new BMW across the Channel or through a supermarket because “TomTom told me to”, she saves it and shows me it when I get home.
My cause (to be free from the tyranny of her minimalist map-reading techniques) wasn’t helped when the one time we really needed it to work, to get to hospital with a supersick two-year-old asap, the damned thing directed us to a field in which the closest there was to a full-service A&E department packed with highly trained doctors was a horse.
Still, I love satnav. And now, praise the techno-lord, it’s available for walkers, too. ViewRanger allows you to follow footpaths on Ordnance Survey maps electronically. You don’t even need to spend £200 on a fancy device without your wife finding out.
You just need to download the software onto your mobile phone (as long as your mobile is relatively fancy; see below), purchase the “map tiles” you need and, if you want to follow one of hundreds of downloadable walks, just click to find which ones are in the area, select one and you’re away. Well, away-ish.
“Can’t we just go for a nice walk?” she whined. “Do we have to have your damned phone along with us?”
“But I’ve downloaded a walk from Toys Hill to Crockham. It’s only 10.6 kilometres. And it looks pretty. Look.”
“I’m not going to look at some stupid picture on your stupid phone. I’m not.”
Two arduous hours later and we were off. Well, almost. The phone started beeping as we approached the start of the route, and, because it took me more than two seconds to work out how to stop it, we wasted another 12 minutes arguing about whether or not modern technology was sucking all the joy from our lives. Then we had to stop because I hadn’t yet worked out how to make the program move on to the next waypoint automatically.
“Why do you never read the instructions properly?” she asked, before another argument about whether or not men need to read instructions properly. As we zigzagged down Toys Hill towards Chartwell, I began to get the hang of it. There we were, a little red dot following a little red line. If they ever set a series of 24 in the Kentish countryside, this is what it would be like. FBI tracks nuclear device through Puddledock.
“Look, darling. We’re that little red dot on that little red line,” I said. “Isn’t it clever?” And so we had yet another argument, because apparently the bluebells were more exciting than this incredible application of satellite technology.
I hadn’t even discovered the most exciting aspect of the software. Flicking between the route description (“Continue through a small gate beside an electrically operated five-bar gate”) and the map, I noticed a trip function.
This gives you whole pages of statistics on how your walk is unfolding: how many metres it is to the next waypoint; how far you’ve walked; how much further you have to go; your estimated time of arrival at the pub; your altitude. I started trying to explain the magnificence of all this to my wife, then realised it was pointless. She was cooing over some boring lambs in a boring field.
ViewRanger does take some getting used to. It isn’t as intuitive as TomTom. As such, if your wife is anything like my wife, it is not advisable to take her on the first trial. Indeed, we abandoned our adventure halfway round, because the baby we had with us was apparently not up to a 10.6km walk, not one on which I was stopping every few minutes to check our progress.
The wife didn’t acknowledge the cunningness of the short cut I found on my phone. Like the worst Luddite, she stuck to her annoying principles: walks are meant to be an escape from the modern world. And phones. And things that beep.
So I went off the next day for a run on another ViewRanger route. By now, I had worked out how to make it beep only once per waypoint. I glanced at it every now and again to check speed, progress, altitude. If I took a wrong turn, it beeped at me until I untook it.
And the possibilities are endless.
ViewRanger has licences for OS maps covering the whole of Britain and Ireland, as well as coverage for most of Europe. You can take pictures along the route and upload them with the track once you get home, which is more exciting than a photo album (“No, it isn’t,” she says. “Yes, it is,” I reply.)
Most cleverly, you can link up with other ViewRanger users in your walking, skiing or mountain-biking party and they will be represented by little red dots on your phone. Let’s assume you’re posh, and you’re all skiing in Courchevel. Maybe for Tabatha’s 30th birthday bash. You all arrive at the prearranged fondue point but, zut alors, no Tabatha.
Check your phone... ahh, she’s skied all the way to the bottom of that steep ravine. She might be a while. May as well order without her. You can also buy a tracker to clip onto a dog collar, so one of the red dots is your mutt. It might even be attachable to a wife... I wasn’t brave enough to find out.
My one gripe is that if you finish one of the routes, nothing happens. No “congratulations” message. Nothing. Given that the rest of it is so addictive (I ran faster than I should have done just so I could impress myself with the statistics), could we not make it a bit more computer-gamey? Have a prize? Maybe a free ring tone?
Teens would love it. The countryside would fill up. Facebook would be forced to close shop. No more obesity epidemic. I mention this idea to the wife. She tuts, opens up our dog-eared, non-interactive old OS map and says: “Where shall we go walking this weekend?”
