I went on a circular ride around the Butterleigh area. Many steep hills and quite a few tracks to map. I did one complete track and a few parts of others. Other people seem to have mapped here with very little GPS data, so I corrected some roads which were not in the right place.

Yet another visit to relatives in Marlborough and on saturday and sunday mornings I was once again out walking the streets with my trusty Garmin etrex GPS purchased a year ago on ebay. It has done well over the last 12 months and will hopefully collect a lot more GPS points for OSM.

It was bitterly cold and wet but I managed to keep going for two hours each morning before I got fed up with getting colder and wetter. Also, as more people emerged for their morning papers I got more funny looks from those folk who must have wondered why the hell someone would want to walk up and down roads and footpaths with no apparent goal. Little do they know!

The result of all this meandering is that another bunch or roads and footpaths in Marlborough are now mapped. I guess one or two more outings should complete the whole town, but I expect I'll realise I've missed some bus stops or post boxes, or even the odd footpath. Oh well, let's see.

Visited Bude this weekend, and walked a stretch of the South West Coast Path from Bude heading north. None of the coast path had been mapped there before today, so another first for me. Lets hope other walkers fill in more of this wonderful walking route that goes all around the UK's South West coast.

I went out at lunch-time today to map some of the roads around where I work. There is a large area, off Topsham Road in Exeter, where there used to be a navy supply store. The land was bought by property developers Persimon a few years ago with a plan to build 600-700 houses, but there is nothing there, just the road leading into a flattened wasteland. There is a lonely little temporary office for selling these no-existent properties at the end of the road. It is a sign of the times, with the current financial crisis.

A visit to in-laws meant I could go wandering the streets of Hereford, particularly the eastern side of the town where I have added most of Tupsley. I also found quite a few streets that needed correcting near the town centre. I think they must have been set up initially with just a few data points gleaned from someone driving through the streets rather than walking, as I have done over the last couple of days.

WALK PEOPLE! It gets better data, and you notice so much more about the area you are mapping.

Another visit to Marlborough, in Wiltshire, over the weekend gave me more opportunity to add to the map of the town. Apart from the original mapping of main roads through the town I have been the only person mapping there.

I'm having a bit of trouble getting the National Cycle Routes 4 and 45 to render for normal streets. It seems to render ok for cycle tracks. The help on this is not very clear. I have tried a combination of ncr attributes and relationships.

When the cycle map next renders the area I will see if I have it correct.

I wrote an article for the UK Mensa Magazine and it has been published in the latest edition. This will hopefully get a few more volunteers for the project.

A lunch-time visit to Exminster has clocked up my 100th track upload for OSM. I have been doing a few trips out to out-lying areas of Exeter which I am unlikely to cycle to on the way home from work. Other areas of Exeter between work and home will get cycled through as I do more rides during the summer.

What connects them? Me. I have recently been up in Marlborough visiting family, and added more to my exclusive and growing map of the area. This time added some of Marlborough college grounds and also some tracks in Savernake Forest - a big job there - need to do it on a bike really.

A trip from Marlborough to Hereford allowed me to begin to fill in the gap between the M50 and the Hereford outskirts.

Closer to home I've spent some days cycling into the beautiful, but very hilly, Mid Devon area north and west of the Crediton to Bickleigh road, visiting Cheriton Fitzpaine, Stockleigh English and Shobrooke.

I found a tractor graveyard near Cadbury - just down the road to Cadeleigh, near Windwhistle Cross (great name - the wind was whistling when I was there!)

I spent an hour driving around the streets in the Sweetbrier Lane area of Heavitree on monday. None of the roads there were mapped. The large cemetery and Heavitree Park also need mapping - maybe I'll do that on the weekend, walking through each of them.

This evening I drove around some of the estates in Beacon Heath. There are a lot of footpaths joining the roads together, so it will require a revisit.

I am continuing to fill in the Pennsylvania area, and also add footpaths around the Ludwell Valley Park, which is next to where I work in Pynes Hill. I have also found and corrected some errors in the central Exeter area.

Sent a message to Guy who has done a lot of Exeter. Hopefully we can co-ordinate our efforts to get Exeter completely mapped.

We drove up to Minehead on the north coast of Somerset, and started the South West Coast Path. This has been a project we have been wanting to do for a while, and now we have started, although we only walked out fro an hour and a half before having to turn back before getting caught in the dark.

There isn't much for Minehead on OSM so far, so my tracks will start to flesh it out a bit.

Went to visit some friends in Paignton yesterday and walked with them in the area around Stokeinteignhead. There are lots of small roads and footpaths there some of which are right in the tidal area of the river Teign, so mapping them puts them in the river.

The area between Paignton and Totnes could also do with some filling in, as can Paignton itself.

Today I did a small bike ride from Thorverton down to Stoke Canon and added some little side roads and tracks, as well as two named residential roads in Stoke Canon itself.

More walks around Marlborough yesterday has added to the area of the town now included on the map. I have uploaded these and also added a few post boxes, telephone boxes and footpaths. Lots to do still around Marlborough, but now I'm back home in Devon, so someone else will have to do it - when I'm up that way again I will hopefully be able to fill in anything still missing.

Early morning walks around the College Fields area of Marlborough mean that I can now complete that part of Marlborough residential area. The town has very little mapped so far, and this would be a great project for a local school to complete - maybe Marlborough College pupils could do it.

I have just bought a Garmin etrex device from ebay, along with all the necessary cables and attachments for putting it on my bike. I intend to fill in the gaps in the map for the mid Devon area and Exeter. I live in Thorverton, right in the middle of mid Devon, and I work on the outskirts of Exeter, so I'm just working my home territory.

I had some trouble working out how to get the tracks off my Garmin etrex at first, but finally got the settings correct on the device ("Garmin" only), and used the correct format for saving the file with gpsbabel. Now it is easy!

I discovered the same thing everyone seems to with these devices, that if you save a track on the device then detail is lost, so my first few tracks that I made and saved before downloaded to my PC were useless.

I'm not sure at the moment how to upload waypoints to OSM. I've been storing locations of Post Boxes and Churches as waypoints, and I'd like to include them in my mapping.