Strange walk...

So the aliens are with us and you must have been in a time warp or something.

Mike Mason

"Nick Hopton" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I thought I'd try something local yesterday, so I planned a walk from my home in Caversham up into
South Oxfordshire and back. No problem, about 28 km, according to my calculations. I set off at
eight o'clock and after a while began to get an uneasy sensation that something wasn't right, I
just didn't seem to be covering the ground (but this was just after I'd made a quick beer stop at
the 'Crooked Billet' at Stoke Row).

After nine hours or so I arrived back home, pretty worn and puzzled. But all was explained when I
plotted my track in GARtrip. 40.3 blinking km, that what!

Investigations continue...

Regards, Nick.

--
Nick Hopton and Anne Hopton Caversham, Reading, England <[email hidden]

Nick Hopton wrote

Quoted message said:

after I'd made a quick beer stop at the 'Crooked Billet' at Stoke Row).

A fine establishment and no mistake. Used to do a wonderful warm duck and bacon salad.

Quoted message said:

40.3 blinking km, that what!

Hmmm. Reading the 1:25000 scale on a map measurer when using a 1:50000 map, perhaps ?

Chris
--
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Chris Gilbert said:

Quoted message said:

40.3 blinking km, that what!

Quoted message said:

Hmmm. Reading the 1:25000 scale on a map measurer when using a 1:50000 map, perhaps ?

25 miles instead of kilometers?

Roos

In a recent message <[email hidden]>, Roos Eisma <[email hidden]> wrote.

[...]

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

40.3 blinking km, that what!

Quoted message said:

Hmmm. Reading the 1:25000 scale on a map measurer when using a 1:50000 map, perhaps ?

25 miles instead of kilometers?

[...]

No, it's more peculiar than that, I think, but I *will* get to the bottom of it <g>.

I scanned-in some chunks of OS map, calibrated them and then planned a route, using GARtrip. GARtrip
told me that the route was about 30 km, which was fine. When I got back from the walk the Geko told
me that the distance I'd covered was about 30 km. But, when I plotted the track I found that
according to GARtrip the distance I'd covered was 40.3 km.

Obviously, at the planning stage all GARtrip can do is to total the straight-line distances between
waypoints, but the difference between this total and the actual distance that I walked was much
greater than I have ever had in the past. From stepping it out with dividers on the map and from the
time it took I know that in reality this walk was in the order of 40 km.

Regards, Nick.

--
Nick Hopton and Anne Hopton Caversham, Reading, England <[email hidden]

The message <[email hidden]>
from Nick Hopton <[email hidden]> contains these words:

Quoted message said:

I scanned-in some chunks of OS map, calibrated them and then planned a route, using GARtrip.
GARtrip told me that the route was about 30 km, which was fine. When I got back from the walk the
Geko told me that the distance I'd covered was about 30 km. But, when I plotted the track I found
that according to GARtrip the distance I'd covered was 40.3 km.

I use Ozi, not Gartrip (with which I am not at all familiar), and would expect that to give a very
accurate estimate of the distance involved in any walk provided I took the care to match the track
to the intended route. Likewise I have the inferior Summit rather than the Geko but while that may
occasionally increase the distance by introducing spurious track points I wouldn't expect it to
read under unless it was switched off for part of the walk and that would be obvious from the
recorded track.

Quoted message said:

Obviously, at the planning stage all GARtrip can do is to total the straight-line distances
between waypoints, but the difference between this total and the actual distance that I walked was
much greater than I have ever had in the past. From stepping it out with dividers on the map and
from the time it took I know that in reality this walk was in the order of 40 km.

ISTR that others have argued that a rough estimate can be arrived at very quickly by measuring the
straight line distance between major points and multiplying by root 2 which, for this exercise, can
be taken as 1.4 which, as it happens, takes you back to 28.6 for your starting distance, very close
to your actual figure.

Personally I find a piece of string both quicker and far more accurate than the root 2 route.

--

Roger

Nick Hopton wrote

Quoted message said:

Obviously, at the planning stage all GARtrip can do is to total the straight-line distances
between waypoints

You know that suggesting that modern technology is in some way fallable and can actually *prevent* a
safe walking experience could be viewed as heresey at some of the tables in the u.r.w bar. You
should really be more careful who you talk to in here.

;-)

Chris
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