Decided I'd do stuff off The Mount on my way home today. It's pretty flat all the way with some gentle up and downs until it gets to about 200 yards from Frankwell where it's a good downhill. Leaving the road is a different story but it wasn't too bad.

I decided I'd take every road on the left, although I did a couple of cul-de-sacs anyway.

Once in town I headed up Claremont Bank, which was quite steep and recently made 2 way. Then a few little bits of that before I joined the Victoria Avenue (NCN81) in the Quarry Park.

Right, to tag up...

I've just got home from work, which has taken me about 2.5 hours. Considering I live about 3 miles away, that's a really long time. Actually, my average speed was about 6 miles per hour because in that time I covered about 16 miles, probably ~6-8 of that is previously unmapped roads, and ~1 mile currently unmapped by Google.

I've also worked how a few existing roads join up, with some of the roads in between being easily done on my journey to work. Basically, it cuts off a mile of main road before I get onto NCN81, which takes me about 1/4 mile from work.

The battered fish fillets I bought from local shop are ridiculously expensive! £4.99 for 4, which turn out to be really tiny! Not impressed.

I've been working as a web developer in Shrewsbury for 2 weeks now. Just a couple of hours ago I agreed to the terms of a flatshare. So within the next week or two I'll be moving in to the Monkmoor area.

Currently I appear to be the only OSMer anywhere near Shrewsbury, something I hope to change.

If anyone wants to come up for any mapping, do let me know. I can't offer anywhere to stay but will be happy to meet up and provide any assistance required.

One of the great things about mapping for OpenStreetMap is the things you find while out and about, heading down every street, path and passageway that will allow you through.

It was while surveying in an area I've been meaning to do for some time, but never quite found the motivation, just over the Hagley Road and down towards Harborne that I came across the Moor Pool estate.

The first indication that this was not just a typical set of streets was one called 'The Circle,' inside which is the Moorpool Hall and two tennis courts. Cycling around, it became obvious this was some community in itself, just a short distance from Harborne High Street and the A4040.

According to the website of the Moorpool Residents Association:

"The estate was established in 1907 by John Nettlefold, first chairman of Birmingham Housing Committee and member of the Guest Keen Nettlefold (GKN) family. It formed part of the Garden City concept shared by the Cadbury family in Bournville, to provide low density housing centred on a community hall and with many interspersed green spaces, at a time when the majority of inner city housing was of a crowded back-to-back design.

"The five hundred houses were built between 1908 and 1911 and shared a similar design, which can still be seen. The estate today boasts two tennis clubs, a bowling green, numerous allotments and, of course, the Moorpool itself with an active fishing club. In the Moorpool Hall there is a very active and acclaimed dramatic society, a unique skittle alley dating back to 1913 and snooker tables. Many other groups and societies also meet there."

The houses were built 9 to an acre, when typical building was 40 per acre.

Unfortunately my mapping of the area was interrupted by my sister, who has lost her key and wanted me to return home and let her in. Getting home took approximately 1 hour (I saw a path through a small area of woodland I'd missed). Sorry, sis!

Such is my lack of motivation to get out of bed when I don't really need to...

I'm busy on Friday so going to Shrewsbury on Saturday instead.

For now I'll map the area around Harborne I intended to do yesterday but ended up going to Selly Oak instead (sister wanted to try cycling her journey to work, with the result that I bought a new bike pump and cycle lock while passing Halfords). Apparently it took forty minutes to cycle 3 miles...

So if anyone wants to join me in Shrewsbury on Saturday, you've got a little more notice. Leave a comment/message and I'll try and set out a timetable.

A little distracted by the earthquake last night so didn't get much sleep. Going tomorrow (Thursday) instead. Same plan.

Mapping out towards Harborne today instead. A few long residential streets I started to do on foot yesterday after getting locked out of the house. Gave up because I don't have the patience to walk long streets when I could cycle them in 1/4 of the time!

I've recently got a got in Shrewsbury (web developer at Mutiny Desgin) and am going to be commuting by train from Birmingham. Obviously this gives me the opportunity to map various bits of the town after work.

I'm heading up tomorrow (Wed 27th Feb) to try out the journey, taking the bike in order to complete some of NCN 81. I'm happy to meet anyone that wants to come and do a bit, whether they've ever done any mapping before (but I don't have a GPS so you'll have to supply one), although I realise it very short notice and most people have work.

I'll be doing the trip out towards the Oxon Business Park, towards Bicton Heath, (since this is where I'll be working). While there I'll map the business park itself, then head back towards town joining the NCN 81 at the first available opportunity, getting off it by the train station. Then heading back the other way I'll finish off inside the loop of the river before rejoining NCN 81 and following it as far as I can (hopefully as far as Telford.

Is the plan. Weather permitting.

Vaulting went well; no-one died. I got a little worried when cartwheels were mentioned but I actually managed to do one today. Hoorah!

Coverage of Shrewsbury is a little improved. I got done about half the area inside the loop of the river, for road coverage, at least. I've still got streetnames to do. Unfortunately my photos don't seem to be lining up with the GPS trace properly again. I could be here a while...

I'm out vaulting again tomorrow. This time with my old team near Shrewsbury.

I've been making some effort to get something done each time I visit. Hopefully I'll have time to do some of the roads around the town centre. Just to join up a few things that are there already.

Just now I fixed up some roads by the railway station. It's a complicated junction made very difficult to work out from GPS because several railway tracks passing overhead. There's a tunnel right underneath one set, various other roads joining nearby. Only with my local knowledge was I able to get that in.

Next up is the railway lines themselves.

If anyone else could verify it looks reasonably correct, please do so and let me know your opinion.

I have finally been out on my bike for the first time in a couple of months. I'm slightly concerned about the gears and the tyre pressure was slightly lower than I might've hoped. I'll check it again later when I can borrow the pump.

Anyway, I've completed all the roads off Bearwood Road, except one or two at the top end that were under construction when I was there last. Stanhope Road has me a little confused. I'll have to go out again sometime with the objective of checking where it actually goes.

Some roads in that area I managed to get while out on my driving lessons but am missing names for. It's probably worth going out there in future and surveying the whole area again properly.

Thanks Morwen, RichardB. I'm still seeing roads rendered without casings and on top of nearby primary roads, which isn't great. I guess the casings will be sorted once people update rendering clients.

I'm quite glad to have pretty much finished that section now (using main roads to split areas into manageable bits). I think I'll start heading West/South, where I don't have to cycle as far to find dragons.

Yesterday I decided to brave the elements and unintentionally limited gearing on my bicycle and get some mapping done locally (I've been doing bits on various journeys and other places I've been - see Stalham, Norfolk and Mold/Wrexham and bits in between, Flintshire).

Persimmon Homes are building on the site of the former M&B owned, hence 'Deer's Leap,' Cape Hill Brewery. This has been the cause of quite some controversy as nearby is the Deer's Leap wood nature reserve, which the developers have not taken into consideration appropriately and have bulldozed sections of (for more information on this see http://www.ladywoodconservatives.com/votersview/DLW.htm).

Anyhow, a very small stretch of road on the site was accessible when I was passing the area so I took to opportunity to survey that. Obviously I'll need to go back in the new year to record a bit more. Another one up on the competitors!

If anyone knows how to tag roads as being under construction so they get rendered, do let me know.

I was trying to think of a more original title but it didn't happen.

What did happen, however, is that I managed to fix my puncture. It's my first ever and with not having anyone around to help I'm worried it won't last. But I pumped it up to 45psi (markings say max 50) and it still seemed fine after cycling 7 miles over various surfaces (tarmac, gravel, mud, stones) so I'm happy enough. Just hope it still works when I want to use it tomorrow.

Overall while I've been here it's been fairly successful. I've mapped about 32km, about 12 of which was on the bike. The other 20 or so was visiting my aunty and taking her 3 dogs for a walk in nearby woods (the paths account for about 2km with my estimate of the area of the woods about 3km).

Unfortunately I can't upload the data as I do it since I can't actually get online. I've uploaded some using my grandmothers phone line but the rest may have to wait. I almost managed to get my laptop online using my mobile but prepay customers on O2 are very limited in what they can actually do. DNS lookups were about the extent of it.

Anyone know of a network that allows prepay customers to get their laptops online? It's only an occasional thing for me so a contract is hardly worth it, whereas carrying a spare sim is hardly a burden. Answers on a postcard please.

See my previous post for the location of Stalham (yesterdays data should have rendered by now on the tiles@home layer).

I'm in Stalham, Norfolk, this weekend to help my Aunty with a leaflet to explain what the ZimBO Fund is about. She was so moved by her visit to Zimbabwe that she wanted to set up a fund in order to support some of the people, including two AIDS orphans - Benson and Oscar, hence the Zim-BO - she met there.

While here I thought I'd attempt to map at least some of the town.

Today I've been and surveyed several residential streets that make up one area (by my estimation, about one quarter) of the town. I think that's the fiddly bits out the way. The rest is basically long, straight roads with some (large) areas of green.

Unfortunately that'll have to wait. I got back to the house and went in for a quick drink. When I went back out to put the bike away (it was dark at this point) I noticed an odd squeek as it moved. Checked tyres - front was flat.

My Grandmother has a puncture repair kit so I won't be stuck for too long. Not quite how I intended to spend Sunday afternoon but nevermind.

Segments are no more!

I've been waiting for this change for a while. Ever since I started trying to do stuff with the data. Segments always seemed like an extra hoop to jump through. So in theory I should be able to get on with some of the things I've been wanting to do for a while. I shall see...

Just trying out the segmentless JOSM. There's a few residential streets I mapped once but never properly tagged. It was the mass of cul-de-sacs that got me. Having failed to photograph the time from my GPS for the purposes of syncing with the camera, I couldn't work out what any particular road was meant to me. I've now gone back to it and by trial and error have got most of it done properly.

I expect I'll have to check this area when I go out that way again. For now, though, the longer single roads towards the city centre seem a little more appealing.

On Sunday I had an equestrian vaulting demonstration near Shifnal. The location I was given was Wyke, near Telford. It's not far wrong, as Shifnal is near Telford. However, there is a Wyke and The Wyke just about 10 miles apart.

Searching Wyke, Telford on Goooooogle maps (and even Multimap) returns Wyke near Ironbridge. Which is where I went. By taxi. £14 later, I was in Wyke, near Telford. I soon learnt, by asking one of the locals, there was a riding centre at The Wyke, near Shifnal. Another expensive taxi ride later, I was there.

I finally arrived just in time (5 minutes to spare, enough to get changed and do a quick warm-up). The demo went very well.

OpenStreetMap would, of course, have returned (had they been in the database at the time) both Wyke and The Wyke for a search on Wyke, Telford. One point where I think we (will) have quite a useful feature above what Google does.

I yesterday went to pick up an athlon cpu to see about fixing my sister's computer (complaining of l2 cache error). Got home, went to take the old one out and found it stuck. A quick 'google' and I discovered these ones are apparently soldered in place. Crap!

Anyway, cycled to station, caught train to Dudley Port, did a few roads around where the seller lives (conveniently a fairly small circle road with a few cul de sacs coming off it). Back to station, got back to Smethwick, turned on GPS, did a few roads round there, got home, plugged in memory card, found my last trace (Smethwick) was 0 bytes in total. Argh!

Luckily the NaviGPS can log to its own memory as well as the SD card. Quick fire up of laptop (windows) to copy and I had at least something, although not filtered as my usual traces are.

Fun day.

I've gone off my bike a bit after finding the gears a bit awkward to change. Also had a minor fall after handle bars came loose while trying to do a tight turn in a cul-de-sac.

My main reason for not doing anything about it right now is that in 3 weeks I have the equestrian vaulting National Championships in Moreton Morrell (which will be, at least partly, in OSM in 3 and a half weeks). One of the main requirements of the sport is a high level of flexibility (in the sense of being able to lick one's shins). Unfortunately, the small range of movement involved in cycling means that muscle develops short in length, so reducing flexibility.

So in an attempt to get slightly better scores at this competition I'm not going to be mapping for a while. Probably.

Finally managed to do some mapping yesterday on my bike. I was quite pleased at how much I managed to do in the 5 or so minutes I had when going out to meet my sister. I got done what would've taken me 20 minutes by foot. Quite promising for future mapping trips.

As the bike is a folding mountain bike it had no trouble with a couple of steps I encountered when taking a 'short-cut.' Also as it folds it had no trouble fitting in the back of the car to get home at the end of the evening.

My next plan when I have a day spare is to take it on the train to Shrewsbury and get a couple of the cycle routes mapped. I think it's the NR71 that passes through the town along the river so should be a nice section to do.

I finished my job exactly one week ago and got everything moved back home on the Thursday. The following day, shortly after doing a bit of work on my computer (PSU blew up, replaced CPU fan at same time and now runs 30°C cooler!) my bike arrived.

The bike Haro DX folding mountain bike. I was put off a folding bike by the fact they don't seem particularly useful over anything that isn't paved road. Was also put off a full size bike by the fact I'd be limited with what public transport I could take it on. This bike seems a good compromise.

Although it doesn't fold up as small as most folding bikes it's still small enough that I can take it on most buses and it'll go on the train without the feeling awkwardness that has always accompanied my previous experiences.

Anyway, took the bike out for a test ride 'round the block' and soon after leaving had my phone stolen. It's knocked my confidence a bit but I'm sure I'll be out mapping on my bike soon enough.

Shrewsbury looks a bit bare. I think I might end up filling in cycle routes there next week.