Strava has recently published its annual report. Like last year it reports a huge increase in users - globally 2 million people join every month, here in the U.K. 17% of the population now use the app. I can’t find a thank you to OSM mappers in the report but nevertheless I think we can take a lot of the credit for its success. The app and all its runners, walkers and cyclists are dependent on the paths and roads that we have mapped and are still mapping. They must surely be one of the biggest groups of OSM users.

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It’s now 3 years since I started mapping the footpaths near Sheffield. In that time the project has clarified. I now have a rough circle drawn around Sheffield on an OS map. It has a radius of about 10miles. Within that area I am trying to complete the mapping of all (or as near to all as I can get) of the countryside paths. I have completed the western half of the circle. I have found that less than half of the paths were mapped to the north and west of the city but some areas to the south of the city are almost completely mapped. My method is to take a small area of countryside, usually enclosed by roads and spend a day surveying and mapping all the paths in it. I map on my phone as I go using Go Map!! When I’m happy that all the paths are mapped to a reasonable standard I colour in that sector on the OS map. At the moment I am heading east and south from Wath Upon Dearne and heading east from Dronfield. If I keep going at the current rate I estimate that I will have coloured in the whole circle by 2023. That is if I don’t get distracted by other mapping projects. So far the footpath mapping has been interrupted by periods of post box mapping around Sheffield and more recently by defibrillator mapping.