I did a short (no doubt, by hardcore Hikers standards) 4 hours on a local walk / hike this morning – up the Wessenden Valley , onto the Pennine Way and then back down across part of Saddleworth Moor to Marsden.
I used the Viewranger GPS app , now installed on my phone – although I’m still figuring it out. I kept the phone dry despite the truly APPALLING rain that son Joe and I had put up with for most of the time. Summer? I don’t think so. The horizontal rain and strong winds made our faces hurt. Meh. The phone stayed dry because the really cool Aquapac arrived in time on saturday and its a great little bag. The camera lens was a bit obscured by part of the non-transparent case but I think that’s because I kept my chunky bodyglove / bumper case on the phone. If I took that off and kept just the phone inside the Aquapac then it would be a fine fit, I’m sure .
Witness this slightly blurred photo – although that could be down to the weather rather than the case obscuring part of the camera lens..
As well as testing out the Aquapac, I was also working out how to use the neat service offered by socialhiking that can be used with Viewranger.
I like the fact that this site / app service was set up by a guy who loves what he does (hiking) and was initially meant for him to be able to share a charity walk he was doing with friends.
It’s a shame the map of the route only showed 3 beacons / locations of where we were; as it looks a bit odd. The idea was that Viewranger would send out a ‘beacon’ location of where I was (or rather, where my Aquapac-d phone was) every 15 minutes. So you would get a good / smooth plan of my progress (if I had chosen to share the map with anyone). But for some reason it didn’t. No problem, as this was just a little test / local walk. But if I do the national 3 peaks (say) I’d like to have my progress viewable with more granularity on a public map which is an option in socialhiking.
I did more than 11km, not that I was counting distance – this was just a nice walk out with the always agreeable and reliably geologically (and music, amongst others things) knowledgable company of Joe.
Anyway, here’s the map as it stands..
Related articles
- “Hike Your Own Hike” redux (takealonghike.wordpress.com)
- http://takealonghike.wordpress.com/
- http://new.socialhiking.org.uk/blog/
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