Veloviewer. Who is using it, and what do you get from it?
Discussion
Some Gump said:
ZetecTDCI said:
Good going. Do you go off road much ? Sticking to roads only can limit what tiles are available. I don’t do any off road stuff
If you take up tiling, off road is a must!I've been in fields, down singketracks, occasionally done a bit if hedge hopping, all on a carbon road bike with 23c
Partly because in some rural tiles, there are no roads. There's even one tile i need to get if i'm to expand north west that the tile doesn't even have any official footpaths, so that will be interesting to bag
All adds to the fun imo.
There are some places where you simply cannot (or at least dare not) go. For me that's 4 tiles covered by the Porton Down labs and training area, another 7 tiles which are artillery impact areas on the Larkhill live fire ranges, and some more which are wholly inside the Imber ranges. I know at least one rider who managed to get those Imber tiles but the MOD Police have stepped up patrols of the Imber end of Salisbury Plain Training area so even when there are no red flags flying it's simply not worth the risk of an illicit entry. There are also a few mostly "wet" tiles (Portsmouth Naval Base has three of them) and an inaccessible tile at Fawley Oil Refinery. They'd need a change of use of the land for me to try on foot/by bike. They might be possible by kayak though, if I ever get hold of one.
Then there are the "naughty but not really criminal" tiles. Usually private land, big estates, off-limits forestry, etc. But, so long as the tiles aren't literally going through someone's garden, I'm personally willing to do a little "light trespassing". Neither VeloViewer nor the 'Ride Every Tile' sites either condone or encourage such trespass, and there are no prizes over and above online bragging rights so it's up to you if you indulge. I've ridden some forest fire roads I shouldn't have been on, and sometimes it's a case of riding a bike where it's officially only a footpath. The purists might object too, but if necessary I'll go on a walk or a run to do some tiling. An example is the Royal Artillery barracks on Thorney Island. There's a Public Footpath around the shoreline, and the guardroom have the ability to remotely unlock the gates for access. Unfortunately I turned up on a bike and they refused to let me in on it (although they let in a young lad who had a family ID card and lived within the wire. For that one I'd need to return and park nearby to go around on foot.
Sorry for the long post so far, by the way. But there's one last type of tile where opinions differ as to how to claim them. One 'Solocle' who posts on here often rides on some big, busy trunk roads to claim tiles. I've claimed those same tiles by riding up to the trunk roads on byways and bridleways. It's horse for courses sometimes and you just do it how you're most comfortable doing it. Misusing my road bike has cost me a few times in terms of needing a new tyre after a byway excursion. I seldom plan a route with "unsuitable surfaces" for my bike, but often pass a junction of road and byway/bridleway as a sort of recce for a return trip with a more suitable bike, only to find a benign looking surface which tempts me off road. Usually to get more than half way along said route and find the surface deteriorates, by which time i'll decide to just forge onward, even if that means walking. Which is why I often put SPD pedals onto my road bike and wear MTB shoes if I even suspect I'll be tempted onto the PROW network. But I was lucky on that last tiling trip because the one Public Byway I rode was also a private road which had been nicely surfaced quite recently, and the Thames Path section i rode was mostly well surfaced with only a relatively short section of good, dry, hard packed gravel.
I've been away from the bike for 5 months (save for a handful of short rides that yielded few VV tiles), and even longer since I determinedly set out to do some tiling, so it's nice to be back at it again. But it is getting tougher these days. Unclaimed tiles are further away now that I've cleaned up the local ones. This means I either have to put in a very long ride to claim relatively few tiles, or I get the train out and ride back (fares are expensive), or more likely drive to a "new" area, do a targeted tiling ride and then drive home, but the price of fuel for the car means long days and big rides too to make the most economic use of resources. That's why I do things like yesterday, where I needed to drive up the M3 anyway to collect my son and all his swag for him to spend a long weekend at "home" to watch the Bournemouth Air Festival and to see his mum. I simply detour on the way to an area where I need some tiles, with a bike in the boot, and sneak in a ride while he finishes work for the day. Depending upon what time he wants me to drive him back up on Monday, I may stick the bike in again and do an afternoon/evening ride on my way back down. Next week may see an attempt to ride the entirety of the Tour Of Britain stage 7 route for me. That wouldn't help much with tiling, but there are a couple of tiles near Chickerell/Weymouth which I haven't yet ridden and are on the route. We'll see how that goes, though...
Solocle said:
I'm struggling with Squadrats. I don't find the tiles, the mapping, or the user interface anywhere near as easy/familiar/comfortable to get into as VeloViewer. So I've resigned myself to only adding the smaller tiles on there as a side-effect of any Veloviewer tiling and Wandrer Earth roaming that I do.
I haven't done a lot of planned tiling recently. All my riding has been, for me at least, very close to home. I've ridden new roads, and lots of new trails/byways/bridleways, but all in areas I've already claimed as VeloViewer tiles. Nabbed a few in the Cotswolds on a recent break with my wife, but they were all walked and only really added to the (eventual) burden of joining them all together.
On other VeloViewer news, my subscription ran out because I hadn't logged in for a while (I haven't actually updated VV for those Cotswolds tiles yet). I pay annually as a PayPal "guest", so need to renew manually. I'm still stunned by just how much of a bargain membership is. £10 for a year? It's lots cheaper than Wandrer Earth (I'm still a free member on that), and my Strava subscription is going to sting a bit this year, I think.
I've got a few ideas about rides I want to do, but no firm plans just yet. If I'm honest with myself, planning ahead really isn't a strong suit for me, but it's unavoidable if I'm ever going to make some of these bigger rides happen, especially any multi-day stuff I want to do.
My "return to tiling" hasn't really gathered any momentum.
State of play on 26th March 2023 was:
Explorer score = 6169
Max Square = 36x36
Max cluster = 4227
Edington Score = 78 miles
State of play on 15th June 2023 was:
Explorer score = 6174 (+5)
Max Square = 36x36 (no change)
Max cluster = 4233 (+6)
Edington Score = 79 miles (+1 mile)
My VeloViewer Score has gone up (although I don't fully understand how) from 99.363 to 99.375. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of rhyme, nor reason for fluctuations in this, it's just a number that VeloViewer throws at me on my 'Summary' page.
I spurned an opportunity to extend my Max Square on Friday. There's a handful of tiles (11 - I just checked) north of Reading I need to "square off" a couple of horizontal rows. That's an easy increase from 36x36 to 38x38. To expand that up to 40x40 would require 43 additional tiles and quite a "linear" out-and-back ride. I say "spurned an opportunity" because I was due to collect my son from Farnborough for the weekend, but didn't leave until it was far too late to squeeze in the required 11-tile ride before collecting him. Poor planning, and too much procrastination on my part, and this week looks like another ride-from-home kind of week for me.
Currently the shortest ride I can do from home to get just ONE tile would be 80.84 miles all told. The awkward thing about that tile, though, is that it's one with only unsurfaced PROW in it, so probably better not to ruin another new set of road tyres chasing tiles. And it sounds an awful long ride on a gravel or MTB. The other issue is that it's in the complete wrong direction to assist with the current Max Square. Although I had two completely separate 33x33 squares sharing Max Square billing back in August 2022, so I could try growing the superseded one (centred just north of Blandford Forum) to match or exceed the current 36x36 Square (centred roughly where the M3/A303 junction is).
For an habitual procrastinator, it would be far easier if there weren't so damned many options for directions in which I could strike out to extend both Square and Cluster. Hmmm?
If PistonHeads has the 'Pie and Piston as it's "virtual pub", maybe VeloViewer could have it's own version, called the 'Square and Cluster'...?
State of play on 26th March 2023 was:
Explorer score = 6169
Max Square = 36x36
Max cluster = 4227
Edington Score = 78 miles
State of play on 15th June 2023 was:
Explorer score = 6174 (+5)
Max Square = 36x36 (no change)
Max cluster = 4233 (+6)
Edington Score = 79 miles (+1 mile)
My VeloViewer Score has gone up (although I don't fully understand how) from 99.363 to 99.375. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of rhyme, nor reason for fluctuations in this, it's just a number that VeloViewer throws at me on my 'Summary' page.
I spurned an opportunity to extend my Max Square on Friday. There's a handful of tiles (11 - I just checked) north of Reading I need to "square off" a couple of horizontal rows. That's an easy increase from 36x36 to 38x38. To expand that up to 40x40 would require 43 additional tiles and quite a "linear" out-and-back ride. I say "spurned an opportunity" because I was due to collect my son from Farnborough for the weekend, but didn't leave until it was far too late to squeeze in the required 11-tile ride before collecting him. Poor planning, and too much procrastination on my part, and this week looks like another ride-from-home kind of week for me.
Currently the shortest ride I can do from home to get just ONE tile would be 80.84 miles all told. The awkward thing about that tile, though, is that it's one with only unsurfaced PROW in it, so probably better not to ruin another new set of road tyres chasing tiles. And it sounds an awful long ride on a gravel or MTB. The other issue is that it's in the complete wrong direction to assist with the current Max Square. Although I had two completely separate 33x33 squares sharing Max Square billing back in August 2022, so I could try growing the superseded one (centred just north of Blandford Forum) to match or exceed the current 36x36 Square (centred roughly where the M3/A303 junction is).
For an habitual procrastinator, it would be far easier if there weren't so damned many options for directions in which I could strike out to extend both Square and Cluster. Hmmm?
If PistonHeads has the 'Pie and Piston as it's "virtual pub", maybe VeloViewer could have it's own version, called the 'Square and Cluster'...?ukbabz said:
yellowjack said:
Agreed. I'd love to hear more about these 1330 tiles in a smidgin under 3 weeks. From what I know (almost nothing) my imagination is running wild...
A bit of a convoluted route between Lands End and John O'Groats had me averaging between 130 and 154 new tiles a day as we zigzagged up the UK. Lots of beautiful landscapes and scenery. Taking in some iconic bridges - Clifton suspension, Severn Bridge, Ironbridge, Forth Road and the Kessock bridge. Also ticked off a few of the 100 climbs from Simon Warrens book - Rundlestone (Dartmoor), Cheddar Gorge, Cairnwell (Glenshee) and the Lecht -- as well as the "wrong side" of fleet moss and the devils beef tub (# 160). I wish I'd put a bigger rear cassette as the 20% climbs on a 36-30 were a bit tough on the quads!I'd like to vent one thing -- f
king headwind. 9 and half days of it! Even when we got to the north coast of Scotland the wind had swung to be a strong easterly for the final push!
I once had a notion about doing Lands End to John O'Groats and back, only sticking to coastal roads. Then Timmy-bloody-Mallett went and did a lap of the UK, and I realised that unless I get a job I'll not have the money to even consider such a ride (it would need to be a credit-card-tour mixed with some wild camping, I think), but if I had a job then finding time to do it would be the issue. It'll probably never happen (for me) now and even if I did "tile the outline of Great Britain" it would have to be done in smaller chunks. Still, it's good to dream...
Solocle said:
One easy task could be to catch the train up to London town and tile North East. One relatively simple ride should connect up to Bishops Stortford if my eye is right.
I myself have plans up there on Saturday, but with a view to connecting west, only doing an eastern radial:
I see what you are getting at. Confession time. Almost everything centred on Saffron Walden is recreated from using the velotoes (spelling?) website. Only the PH Cambridge-London ride (TdF stage route), RideLondon, and three other rides are actual recorded GPS data. The recreated stuff was created from detailed route notes I kept in a hand-written cycling diary, with distance/speed data taken from a Cateye cycle computer. There was a LOT more riding I'd done around there in the previous five years, but I'd kept no notes so recreating those routes was very much off limits (my own rules) as I couldn't accurately plot actual routes. That frustrates me, but then where do you stop? Childhood rides with stabilisers to the park? Youthful rides in the dark hours to meet girls in parks? I've got oodles of routes in South Wales to re-ride with GPS, along with oodles of routes around Ripon, N. Yorkshire, that I'd like to re-ride to get a more "complete picture" of all the places I've ridden, but obviously I'm not able to nail down dates and exact routes for those either. I suppose I could call the cut-off point at the date when GPS cycle computers were first available to buy, or back-date things to when I first joined VeloViewer. But to keep things honest (mostly with myself) I have only recreated routes and rides I had documentary evidence for. I'd love to go back to north Essex, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire though. Some really good cycling roads there which can be extremely quiet when it comes to traffic. It's just too far away for me to justify at the moment. I myself have plans up there on Saturday, but with a view to connecting west, only doing an eastern radial:
One vague plan in my head is to use the motorway network to define goals for cycling. Not to ride on them, obviously. But the M23/A23 looks like a decent 'limit of exploitation' to aim for heading east, then have a cluster bound by the M25, M4, and M5 down to Exeter in the west. What that would give me in Max Square terms I haven't really worked out. And if I ever achieved that? It would be easy then to pick the next M-way or arterial trunk road as a new target to ride to. Another idea I've toyed with is "colouring in" whole counties. Berkshire is small and I'm about half way to completing that already, mostly from legacy GPS rides pre-dating VeloViewer membership. I'm close to complete on Hampshire and Dorset, I've already got a good chunk of Wiltshire covered (although there'll be necessary 'Impossible Tile' gaps in that county) and Surrey is well under way too. I've also made a start on Somerset and West Sussex.
I might be repeating myself, but the artillery ranges at Larkhill, the live fire ranges at Imber, and the off limits parts of Porton Down ranges are a big "blocker" for me. They're why I had two entirely separate 33x33 Squares on the go at one point. Impossible for me to expand directly north right now, and unlikely that the situation will change in my lifetime. I toyed with accessing some of those range tiles illicitly, as some of them have got Strava/VV activity on them, but security is tighter up there than it ever used to be.
In short, I have three main areas that would yield the best tiling returns. Lambourn and Berkshire Downs above the M4, the south eastern corner of my cluster around Chichester/Goodwood/Arundel, and west toward Yeovil, Glastonbury and Wells, possibly linking up with an isolated cluster around Weston-super-Mare. I just need to spend less time on the internet chit-chatting about it and planning routes I never ride, and more time on my bike. There isn't an easy way to keep this hobby up, you just have to ride your bike, and that's what I haven't been doing enough of until fairly recently. Now that I'm riding regularly again, and I've extended myself to over 80 miles in one ride, I have the confidence in my legs and equipment to once again look at rides solely planned around ticking off more of those pesky VeloViewer tiles.
Hmmm.
I'm not sure if my VeloViewer/Strava sync is "broken". I'm just not getting any alerts at all on there, yet both accounts are working OK. I've checked everything I know of to make sure settings are all good, but nothing.
Same with my Wandrer Earth account. If I log in to it it shows me messages for new miles, but nothing gets attached to the comments in my Strava account.
I've had some issues (still having them if I'm honest) with my Google Search results switching to Yahoo when I hit 'enter', and I've had to reset permissions for various apps while trying to fix that. I've also had a new 'phone recently and started running Garmin and Strava apps on it. Is it as simple as now needing to install VeloViewer as an app on my phone (along with Wandrer Earth)? Or is there something (potentially very obvious) that I'm missing to fix this? My 'summitbag' achievements get added to Strava automatically, for comparison, and that's not an app on my phone.
Hardware changes recently? A new Samsung Galaxy A14 phone. A new Garmin Instinct 2 Solar watch. Software changes (as far as I'm aware) are just the Strava and Garmin apps on the phone.
I don't think I've recorded a single bike ride since buying this watch, so that may be an issue, as there may have been no actual increases in VeloViewer tile coverage to report. I suppose I'd better get out and go somewhere I know I'll earn new VV tiles before doing anything drastic (like trying to solve a problem that isn't there). But the Wandrer Earth thing? That's definitely not working properly.
My absence from VV tiling has mainly been down to issues with confidence and anxiety after a collision wrote off my road bike in July, added to my MTB and "frankenbike" Cannondale both being in need of parts (and some labour) to get them properly road/trailworthy, parts I'm struggling to fund at the moment.
I hope to "get back on it" soon, just need to square my head away and get my MTB suspension serviced, among other things.
I'm not sure if my VeloViewer/Strava sync is "broken". I'm just not getting any alerts at all on there, yet both accounts are working OK. I've checked everything I know of to make sure settings are all good, but nothing.
Same with my Wandrer Earth account. If I log in to it it shows me messages for new miles, but nothing gets attached to the comments in my Strava account.
I've had some issues (still having them if I'm honest) with my Google Search results switching to Yahoo when I hit 'enter', and I've had to reset permissions for various apps while trying to fix that. I've also had a new 'phone recently and started running Garmin and Strava apps on it. Is it as simple as now needing to install VeloViewer as an app on my phone (along with Wandrer Earth)? Or is there something (potentially very obvious) that I'm missing to fix this? My 'summitbag' achievements get added to Strava automatically, for comparison, and that's not an app on my phone.
Hardware changes recently? A new Samsung Galaxy A14 phone. A new Garmin Instinct 2 Solar watch. Software changes (as far as I'm aware) are just the Strava and Garmin apps on the phone.
I don't think I've recorded a single bike ride since buying this watch, so that may be an issue, as there may have been no actual increases in VeloViewer tile coverage to report. I suppose I'd better get out and go somewhere I know I'll earn new VV tiles before doing anything drastic (like trying to solve a problem that isn't there). But the Wandrer Earth thing? That's definitely not working properly.
My absence from VV tiling has mainly been down to issues with confidence and anxiety after a collision wrote off my road bike in July, added to my MTB and "frankenbike" Cannondale both being in need of parts (and some labour) to get them properly road/trailworthy, parts I'm struggling to fund at the moment.
I hope to "get back on it" soon, just need to square my head away and get my MTB suspension serviced, among other things.
ZetecTDCI said:
Yes I understand that, but why is a low or high ratio bad ?
I don't think it's either good or bad. It's just an observation, and perhaps unusual among "tilers" because for a time there was only the 'Max Square' to aim for. The 'Max Cluster' came along later to cater for folk who have difficulty in building a square. Think about riders in Cornwall, for instance. Or Canada, where huge areas of wilderness and lakes galore interrupt a square. And riders who live near conflict zones, or borders with unfriendly countries. I've got issues with a number of 'Strictly No Access' MOD sites. Others have issues with oil refineries. I think there's at least one 'Impossible Tile' entirely on a USAF base in the UK. Sometimes we're guilty of taking it a bit too seriously, but I think this is just a turn of phrase, not a judgement. I'm annoyed that I didn't find VeloViewer until after I'd moved house from Farnborough to Bournemouth. I had to go back a couple of times to mop up single tiles and small groups here and there. Or I didn't have to but I wanted to. It frustrates me that it was easier to expand my Max Square up there, but now I'm within a couple of tiles of the coast it's more difficult because I'm limited by the sea.
I'm struggling anyway at the moment. Very little cycling means I've only picked up the odd single tile here and there on walks. A 26 new tile return since September 2022 isn't exactly setting the world of Tiling alight. I keep telling myself I'll get back to it, (both cycling and tiling) but there's always some excuse not to. Currently it's being a bike down, and the weather at the top of the excuse list. Whatever, though. Overthinking it is my worst enemy if I'm honest, and because there are no prizes I probably should just get a bike out and get out there, even if the nearest unridden tile for me is at least a 60 mile (round trip) ride away.
Ultimately it's no big deal. It's up to you how you use VeloViewer and "do tiling" if you're into that. Comparing yourself to others? Do it if you you want to, and although I do pay some attention to folk with more impressive tile tallies, I'm into it more for the spur it gives (gave?) me to explore routes and areas I'd never gone down or into before. I like the data, and "colouring in" the tile map. It's also a great tool for finding segments and old rides/walks/runs, especially when I haven't got many rides in a more distant area. Much easier than trying to sift through years of activites on Strava.
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