Thursday 25 June 2015

Father's Day - the Summer Solstice


My son came home from uni this weekend, after three years study.

The two brothers together again. They have such fun together, like they've never been apart.

At dinner we were joined by the fifth member of our family, Sunayana, another uni veteran. What a good evening.

Sunday I was up early and took a 4 1/2 mile stroll around Bentley Priory with my better half, that was so nice.

The afternoon lunch was crowned by surprise gifts and cards from the offspring. I felt thoroughly spoilt. Even an apologetic phone call from a mate asking for a tow off the A406 didn't dampen my spirits.

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Saturday I'd visited my wreck of a Sunbeam at AV Classic Cars to see how the resto was progressing. It was good to see that finally the 40+ years of weather induced rot was being dealt with. and I got to meet my newly rebuilt carburettors!

 
 
The only dampener are the aches in my leg muscles from all the training I'm doing, getting fit for Scotland!
 
Ah well, can't have it all... 


Tuesday 9 June 2015

Wainwright's Coast to Coast

Just so I can remember where to find it, here's a link to an on-line map of the C 2 C, including OS maps down to 1:50 000 by a chap called Mickey. (no relation)

He posted on the excellent SherpaVan hosted C 2 C forum.

And talking of on-line maps, I found out the OS is phasing out its well-useful Getamap service (maps down to 1:25 000) and replacing it with an OpenStreetmap style of map (with NO contour lines or other relief information. If you want proper maps you have to subscribe. With money.).

I can see why they've done this, to make more money. Getamap, although you have to be able to run Silverlight (so that basically means a Windows computer), was quite handy to just quickly check out a route when no map was to hand. You could even draw and save your own routes.

If you wanted to use it properly, you could subscribe and get full features and full page printing.

This new OSMaps is not nearly as useful. Also with Bing using OS mapping and OpenStreetmap showing contour lines on their Cycle Maps layer, I can't see there being many takers.

Walk Highlands uses excellent maps.

Interesting bit

Rant over.

By the way, Mike Knipe uses http://www.plotaroute.com/