This weekend we drove up north to the coast and of course I was logging the journey so that I can upload it to OSM. The majority of the motorway up past Homs, through Tartus and onto Lattakia has already been mapped, although I think it's been done remotely since it's a bit off in places. I've made most of my uploaded tracks public if anyone fancies updating the existing roads.

In Lattakia we stayed at the Cham Cote D'Azure Resort, which I've mapped but honestly couldn't recommend as a place to stay. I've also mapped the nearby Le Meridien hotel and a couple of nice restaurants in Lattakia, Abu Kamel and Views. The first is a very simple restaurant but can't fault the fish. The second is very nice but extremely expensive for Syria.

The second day we drove to Salah Ed-Din's castle, turning off the main road and taking a very picturesque route up through the hills which I've mapped, as well as the castle itself.

The third day we drove across the hills again and headed to Hama. The majority of this great road has already been mapped, but I did add a couple of extra bits and again the mapped road is a bit out in places; I've not updated it but have made my track public if anyone else fancies it. On the way, we drove through Banias and I've added a few streets in this town; amusingly we had a bit of a police escort through the town when we stopped to ask directions. I've added a few more roads in Hama and will add a few more and the Four Norias restaurant where we ate...

I drove to Seidnaya today to visit the monastery with my in-laws and took the mountain roads back to Damascus. I found a new road is being built and followed it for about a kilometre before it turned into a track. I would have followed the track but I don't think the passengers in the vehicle would have enjoyed it much so I'll have to go and find it on my own some day... looks like it will connect up with the road through Bloudain.

I also managed to convert a couple of the mountain bike tracks to un-graded roads having inadvertently driven them heading towards the Beirut highway. I also found a tunnel under this highway where I had to do a u-turn to head back towards Damascus.

For lunch, we drove down the airport highway to the Damascus Gate restaurant, reportedly the largest restaurant in the world. Needless to say, its location is now added to the map.

I'm quite happy with today's mapping!

Thanks to a very kind cyclist, I have acquired some more track data for mountain bike routes, mostly in Syria but one or two also in Lebanon and Jordan.

I've mapped the tracks as cycle tracks, but undoubtedly some of the trackes are black top. I'll start cycling (and driving them) and update the map accordingly. It's a great start though!

If anyone is going to try out these routes, be warned... there some walking required in areas!

Based on my cycle ride this morning I've added a couple more residential roads in Mezzeh and Dummar (suburbs of Damascus).

The Barada Valley road has been bothering me for a while. For some reason, there were lots of overlying roads, each with conflicting keys. There was also a load of underlying waypoint data.

I ended up deleting the old data and then re-mapping the road, trying not to slice the road into too many sections.

I've also started tidying up and reclassifying some of the roads based on road maps of the area, so I'm starting to add references to road numbers. For example, the road between Damascus and Homs is a motorway with reference M1, but whoever has been adding these roads has been describing them as trunk roads, which is obviously not the case.

I've added a few cycling tracks having acquired some data from some keen cyclists here in Damascus.

I've not been doing much mapping recently and have started to feel guilty about it, so I've just added some street names in West Mezzeh. I've started cycling to work so will also track the route and add a few more roads in the area.

Should be off to the coast in a week or two, so plan to get some good tracks mapped around that area...

Great to see that someone has corrected the boarder with Jordan! Whoever that was... thank you!

Went for a drive at the weekend... the intention was to map the gap in the Barada valley road and to try and find (and map) a track that is marked on most of the maps that I've seen from Sirghaya across to Rankus.

Driving the valley road took a little longer than I expected, which meant by the time we reached Sirghaya we wouldn't have had time to drive up and over the mountain.

The good news is that I now know how to get to the track, although looking on Google Earth can be a bit misleading... it doesn't look half as mountainous in Google Earth as it actually is!

I'll plan on driving up on my own next weekend early one morning and see how I get on!

On the plus side, I did map the missing section of Barada road and I did add a few more meters to the road through Sirghaya (before stopping at an army check-point, since it's getting close to the Lebanese boarder).

It looks like there's lots of roads and tracks off to the west of these road, towards the Lebanese boarder. I might try mapping these, but it gets a bit frustrating since there's so many check-points and you freqeuntly get truned back and told to return to Damascus.

I've been meaning to add for a while now, but finally remembered today... I'm not sure if I've got it at the correct point exactly since I've just taken what looks like the highest point on the aerial photography.

I also added some more parking and another of the cafe's in Damascus Boulevard.

Jogged back from work again tonight, this time passing through the maze of streets in Old Mezzeh in Damascus... I never realised it was such a maze through there!

I made a couple of minor modifications to the Barada River and I'm getting a bit more of a feel for where it flows so will continue to work on it.

Tried to go off cycling up in the mountains near Seidnaya this weekend, but was thwarted by the weather... blowing a gale of ice cold wind and still close to freezing up in the mountains.

Still managed to have a fun drive through the snow swept mountain roads and finished of a road track that I'd started in the summer. Also manage to get about 1km of cycling in though, before realising that it was indeed too unpleasant and returning to the car (also had some trouble with my bike). On the way back I joined up the road back to the highway.

Hopefully I'll start adding a number of cycle routes once the weather starts to warm up a bit!

I was fortunate enough to take the family across to Jordan last week and fortuitously recorded the route on my phone. I've now added the very scenic alternative route down to the Dead Sea that turns off the highway, runs through Jerash (looks like an interesting place where I'll likely return) and cuts across the valleys and finally follows the valley that supplied the Dead Sea with its water.

I also added the hotel where we stayed... the Kimpinski. It's very posh, but it's off season at the moment so there's some excellent deals to be had if you fancy pampering yourself for a few days!

Although I was initially a bit frustrated that there's little map data available for this region of the Middle East, I have to say there's something quite satisfying about adding several hundred kilometers of uncharted road systems... you don't get that opportunity in Europe any more!

Someone beat me to it adding the road to Karak from the Dead Sea Highway, although I did get to add a bit of road in the town and add will add the restaurant that we ate at. I also added a petrol station just before Karak, which is why we turned off the Dead Sea Highway in the first place, as there aren't many places to fill up with fuel along that road!

It's kind of amusing reviewing the route like this... sign posting isn't that great around here so I find I often end up taking an alternative route, which becomes very evident when making the GPS tracks.

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I've just been to a really nice restaurant in the old town of Damascus and added it to the map. I've also added a couple of the roman gates to the old town's wall and a couple of streets.

I noticed that the Airport Circle has been traced using the Yahoo aerial photography, but these images must be a few years out of date since the road has been changed recently. I've added part of the new layout, but this junction really needs re-doing. I'll make sure I have my GPS on when I drive round here again and see if i can re-map the whole thing.

Made a few corrections and additions to these two Damascus suburbs.

I've added a section of the Barada River that runs through Damascus. It's not 100% accurate since I've just run it along side the section of light railway that I added the other day, but it's a start!

This evening I jogged along a section of the light railway that runs up the Barada Valley in Damascus and have now added it to the Damascus map.

I thought it was there, but a couple of weekends ago I checked. The tunnel under crazy roundabout from the city center splits and joins the road going north as well as the one going to the autostrada. So I've added this extra bit of tunnel.

I've joined up the track from the road south of the T3 village to the road that runs north from the Bagdad Highway. You'd struggle with a car down this track so would only advise going by 4x4! I tried to add a rocky outcrop (it's actually an old volcano) by outlining the area and adding a "peak" key since I couldn't find a key for hill or mountain (let alone jabal).

I've modified the road sections from unclassified to service. I also made a minor modification to a road in Palmyra town.

Drove up into the mountains at Bloudan at the weekend to catch the last of the snow. It was quite comical seeing how far up the snowy track people could get their cars. I managed to get a little further in my four wheel drive, but not much!

Anyway, now have the road to Bloudan mapped and maybe in the summer I'll return to map the rest of the road up into the mountain.

Just noticed that someone seems to have misplaced the Jordan-Syria border?

Sure it was OK previously, but suddenly Bosra has become part of Jordan?