Basics
This website allows you to look at both walks and cycle rides set up by others. The site deals with walks and cycle rides separately – in what follows, we will refer to walks, but it applies equally to cycle rides.
The home page (Walk Starts) displays a map which shows the starting points of all of the walks. You can click on the + and – buttons in the top left hand corner to zoom in and out, or drag the map with the mouse to move it around. Tablet users can zoom and drag as usual with two fingers. Initially the map shows walks, but you can click on the link to look at cycle rides instead (and return to walks whenever you want).
Click on the start point to see the name of the walk and click on that name to display a map of the the walk together with a description (if available).
If more than one walk starts from the same point (e.g. Forest of Birse car park), clicking on the start will show the names of all of the walks which start from there; click on the one you want. If an elevation is displayed at the bottom of the map, moving the mouse over it will move the corresponding point on the walk.
There are two other buttons at the top left of each map. The open square displays the map in full screen. Print allows you to chose between printing in portrait or landscape. Make sure you select A4 paper and colour..
The menu also allows you to access:
- All Walks/Map shows all of the walks and their start points.
- All Walks/Database lists of all the walks.
- Help – this file.
- Login/Logout – see Contributing below.
Track vs. Route
GPX files can contain either tracks or routes.
Tracks are recorded on a device such as a hand-held GPS tracker(e.g. Garmin) or a smart phone with an appropriate app (e.g. Memory Map). The resulting file will show exactly where you went by recording your position (and perhaps elevation) at regular time intervals. Given this information, the website can calculate the total distance and the time it actually took (including stops).
Routes are recorded ‘off line’ on a computer (PC, Mac, …) using software such as Memory Map. The resulting route will to some extent be an approximation, although if it’s a walk that you’ve just done, the correspondence to the actual track may be good. The distance will also be an approximation which is why an ‘E‘ (for Estimate) is put after it. Routes don’t have any elevation data nor timing.
Contributing
You can add a comment to an existing description and even upload your own walk, if you have the gpx file for it.
To contribute you need to Login. Enter the Username and Password and click on Login. If you’ve forgotten either of these, contact Jim Hunter. After you’ve logged in once, you can stay logged in indefinitely (on that device), even if you leave the site and come back to it later. However if you do want to log out, just click the Logout menu item.
- Add a comment to the existing description of a route – e.g. some difficulty in following it, places of interest, a nearby tea shop, etc. You do this on the page that displays the route. Scroll to the bottom of the page and type into the box where indicated. Don’t try to edit the original description – this isn’t allowed! You will need to enter your name – fist name and initial of surname is the standard e.g. ‘Jim H’. Once you’ve made your entry, click on SUBMIT.
- Add a new walk, if you have the GPX file for it. Go to the New Route page. You can then click to Select a GPX File from your own device and click again to Upload the File to the web site. Once the file has been uploaded, you’ll be taken to a page which will display your walk. You have to provide your name (again e.g. Jim H). The name of the walk will be shown as the name of the file it came from; you can leave it as it is, or, if the file name is not very informative, change it. You can also provide some sort of description – as much or as little as you chose. Once you’ve checked that everything is OK, click on the ACCEPT button. If you decide that you don’t want to go ahead, click Delete to remove the walk entirely. Note that deletion is NOT reversible!
Editors
This probably doesn’t mean you!
Login as an Editor by clicking on the Log In menu item and entering your unique username and password. In addition to the other possibilities set out above, anyone signed in as a Editor can do the following on any page showing a walk:
- Edit the description.
- DELETE the current walk.
Since Editors are known by name, this will be filled in automatically where appropriate.
Version
The current version is 1.3.5