Veloviewer. Who is using it, and what do you get from it?

Veloviewer. Who is using it, and what do you get from it?

Author
Discussion

Solocle

3,271 posts

84 months

Monday 12th July 2021
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yellowjack said:
I've got a choice to make now. There are couple of tiles around the A34, near Beacon Hill just south of Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey!). No roads in them, and PROWs that barely get inside the tiles. I've either got to ride the A34 for a bit, or take a MTB (or perhaps my old Cannondale "gravel" bike) and push out onto 'Wayfarers Walk' both east and west where I also need tiles with little in the way of paved roads.I don't fancy the A34 much simply because it isn't any fun to ride on such roads.

I did manage to shrink a block of tiles northeast of Andover on my last ride though...



But because of that, I got distracted away from completing Dorset! Although it brought me closer to completing Hampshire. Confused? Follow me on Strava - I flit from one area to another so readily I'll make your head spin... spin

I should probably pick one direction in which to expand my Max Square and concentrate on it, but I enjoy the differences in the character of the countryside and rural architecture of the various counties, and it's nice to explore one to have a break from another every once in a while.
IME the A34 Oxford-Abingdon Soutbound was fine early on a Sunday Morning (7am). Not particularly interesting, but not fearing for your life either.

yellowjack

Original Poster:

17,073 posts

166 months

Tuesday 13th July 2021
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Solocle said:
IME the A34 Oxford-Abingdon Soutbound was fine early on a Sunday Morning (7am). Not particularly interesting, but not fearing for your life either.
Hmmmm? I accept what you're saying, but on that last ride I rode up a farm track/byway right up to the edge of the A34, a couple of miles/tiles north of Bullington Cross. I was cautiously optimistic that there might be a route across it, or underneath it maybe. But no such luck and it was a bit of a st show really, and with no real junctions to speak of between there and the tiles I need there's no likelihood of traffic getting less dense on the section I'd need to ride. So it's likely to be a "no" from me and I'll stick to bridleways and restricted byways for those tiles. I'm reluctant enough to even drive on the A34 to be honest. There really is something deeply unpleasant about that particular road to me, more so than any other route I can think of. No logical reason for it, but it just doesn't appeal at all...

ukbabz

1,547 posts

126 months

Tuesday 13th July 2021
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yellowjack said:
I've got a choice to make now. There are couple of tiles around the A34, near Beacon Hill just south of Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey!). No roads in them, and PROWs that barely get inside the tiles. I've either got to ride the A34 for a bit, or take a MTB (or perhaps my old Cannondale "gravel" bike) and push out onto 'Wayfarers Walk' both east and west where I also need tiles with little in the way of paved roads.I don't fancy the A34 much simply because it isn't any fun to ride on such roads.

I did manage to shrink a block of tiles northeast of Andover on my last ride though...

The highclere tile, looks possible on this road https://goo.gl/maps/ztUR9WSiTvfDw6Th6 but to complete the area then you'd probably need to take a MTB to mop up a few bits

Solocle

3,271 posts

84 months

Tuesday 13th July 2021
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yellowjack said:
Hmmmm? I accept what you're saying, but on that last ride I rode up a farm track/byway right up to the edge of the A34, a couple of miles/tiles north of Bullington Cross. I was cautiously optimistic that there might be a route across it, or underneath it maybe. But no such luck and it was a bit of a st show really, and with no real junctions to speak of between there and the tiles I need there's no likelihood of traffic getting less dense on the section I'd need to ride. So it's likely to be a "no" from me and I'll stick to bridleways and restricted byways for those tiles. I'm reluctant enough to even drive on the A34 to be honest. There really is something deeply unpleasant about that particular road to me, more so than any other route I can think of. No logical reason for it, but it just doesn't appeal at all...
Yeah, I don't think the traffic density on it changes very significantly between the A303 and M4. But without intermediate junctions is ideal - no slip roads to cross. Just roll on, roll off.

If you want to absolutely minimise traffic, 3am is your best bet, but it's still pretty quiet before 7:30 on Sunday, as everyone seems to be having a lie in. I only did a couple of miles that time, but there was just the occassional car approaching from behind, and they all moved across to lane 2 to overtake.

My worst cycling experience was on the A34, Bicester to Oxford at rush hour. The road can be hellish! But without the cars, or at least very few cars, it's just a piece of tarmac. Nice smooth tarmac, I might add wink

The A31 into Ringwood was busier at 9am on a Sunday - still doable, though.

I make it a 2.6 mile stint from Beacon Hill to Litchfield. Descent 120 ft. My suggestion would be to go to the Beacon Hill junction early, stand on the overbridge while you take a drink, and decide based on the traffic level you see. Definitely do it southbound, it's much more fun going downhill!

Edited by Solocle on Tuesday 13th July 09:19

yellowjack

Original Poster:

17,073 posts

166 months

Tuesday 13th July 2021
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Right.

Aside from current riding, I've got a question regarding "historic" rides that aren't on Strava because they were ridden before I got a GPS.

There is a tool called gotoes.org that I have used in the past to claim ride time/distance where/when my GPS device had had a brain-fart.

This morning, while looking for something else entirely (and which I typically cannot find), I turned up my old hand-written 'Cycling Diary'. This was meticulously maintained with notes on routes, by village and town, dates and start times, and the mileage and average speed as returned by an old Cateye "cycle computer". It even has weather notes.

This data is primarily based around Saffron Walden in Essex, with the odd ride around Farnborough and one or two rides from my sister's house in South Wales. As such they definitely won't affect my Max Square, and almost certainly won't expand my Max cluster either. But they might bump up my VeloViewer Score, and will definitely inflate my Explorer Score (total tiles ridden).

So the question really is "would you regard that as cheating?"

Not that it matters (in the grand scheme of things) because as far as I'm aware there are no prizes for tiling. And I'm not making anything up, only stuff that actually appears in the ride diary. A full two years of riding up in the North Yorkshire dales won't appear because I didn't keep records back then.

I mean, I'm uploading the ride data anyway. I just wondered what other people thought of me doing this.

Just to confirm - all rides added this way will appear on (backdated to) the actual date and time they were really ridden. And the only annoyance (for me at least) is that the first two, when processed and uploaded, have credited me with 1.5 to 2.0 mph more in terms of average speed than I actually managed, but so far not taking the piss, nor knocking anyone off their KOM/podium spots. It's not about Strava leaderboards though. Just creating an accurate record of VeloViewer tiles I can demonstrate beyond any doubt that I've ridden.

Solocle

3,271 posts

84 months

Tuesday 13th July 2021
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I have done recreations before - year 8 coastal walk here. I think that as long as you've definitely been to the tile and don't mess with leaderboards, it should be fine.

yellowjack

Original Poster:

17,073 posts

166 months

Tuesday 13th July 2021
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Solocle said:

I have done recreations before - year 8 coastal walk here. I think that as long as you've definitely been to the tile and don't mess with leaderboards, it should be fine.
Yeah, definitely been to them. And so many of the rides will be repeats of the same loop(s) anyway. I've even uploaded one just now where I drove the car to have tyres fitted then cycled back to barracks in my lunch hour... https://www.strava.com/activities/5620141747/segme... ...Why I'm bothering with silly little 4-milers I don't know, but it seems like the "right" thing to do if I'm going to recreate data to recreate it honestly and thoroughly. Warts and all.

yellowjack

Original Poster:

17,073 posts

166 months

Friday 13th August 2021
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Well. I got bored quite swiftly recreating old rides from my cycling diary. So I got back to more current activities. I've been targeting tiles in west Dorset recently, but in the past two weeks I've switched my attention over to east Hampshire. Managed to get a 92 mile ride in yesterday too...


Some of these tiles I already had, but I needed to mop up a few missed tiles.


Down to one unclaimed tile on the Gosport peninsula now, and that one would probably need wet feet at low tide.


Nice to finish a section of "colouring in" and join some completed sections up.

The ride itself... https://www.strava.com/activities/5784842318

This area could be promising for increasing my Max Square too, albeit with absolutely no crossover with my current 29x29. But it will take two or three more rides minimum to reach that point. I've also got Berkshire in my sights now as a county to complete.


The current state of play, focussing on my Max Cluster.

I've rediscovered my Mojo for tiling again, after losing interest for a little while.

yellowjack

Original Poster:

17,073 posts

166 months

Monday 20th September 2021
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Bumping the thread up to ask how everyone is getting on?

I'm struggling for motivation at the moment. Tried non tiling rides. Tried long days of tiling. Had a lot of days where I could have done a massive ride but have just sat at home feeling sorry for myself.

I think it's partly that there is no one single obvious area that'll get my Max Square up in size. Too many little sections that need sweeping up. Plus, apart from a few Dorset and Wiltshire tiles, I'm getting into the realms of making a two hour trip to get any decent tiling done now, and that's before I get the bike out of the car.

This is the full picture of my tiling as of now...


Closer detail of the main cluster...


...with those four poxy Porton Down tiles just left of centre. I've a 29x29 Square to the left of them, and a rectangle of 29x27 to the right of them. If I ride the "right" group of tiles next time out I could have two equal squares of 29x29. Then I could play tile ping-pong and expand one, then the other square. But any progress I make now means a long day out. Three hours in the car means I feel compelled to get at least six hours of riding in to make it worth my time and the cost of the fuel to get there.

I'm still doing it all guided by tiles drawn by hand onto OS 1:50k Land Ranger maps too. Although I'm getting more and more tempted to buy a new GPS so I can follow an electronic route for better efficiency. Too often I find myself going much further into a tile "just to make sure" I claim it when I get home. And too often it's a tile with only off road PROWs in it. Which makes for slow progress.

Anyone else closing in on a goal? Or given up? Or just struggling to motivate enough to make best use of their available riding time?

anonymous-user

54 months

Monday 20th September 2021
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You may think it’s cheating but ditch the car, book some one way train journeys out to a start point and ride home. If you’re still farnborough way(?) there must be a train that could get you out to Bath/Marlborough easy enough?,

yellowjack

Original Poster:

17,073 posts

166 months

Monday 20th September 2021
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pablo said:
You may think it’s cheating but ditch the car, book some one way train journeys out to a start point and ride home. If you’re still farnborough way(?) there must be a train that could get you out to Bath/Marlborough easy enough?,
It's a consideration yes. I'm in Bournemouth now, so still have a railway station (or three) close by. Not such a great service as the Farnborough mainline though.

I've still been making a few "from home" tiling rides, but they seldom net more than a dozen tiles now due to the time it takes me to get out to the tiles I'm hunting.

My biggest issue, though, is being indecisive. I'll plan a ride, sort out the right maps, check they're marked up-to-date with progress so far, put fuel in the car, and identify a place to park. Then, next morning, I usually end up second-guessing myself, getting the laptop open again to "quickly check" something or other. Then I change my mind, use up a couple of hours working out a new plan, then go out much later than I intended. And sometimes traffic conspires to kick a ride into touch. Huge problems on the M3 and A34 last week had me bailing out before I got to the queues and heading east along the M27/A27. Which meant I didn't have all of the right maps for the area, and I hadn't pre-selected a parking spot, and that consumed even more of my time. Obviously it's within my power to change this behaviour, but that's easier said than done with my "issues". And in the end I am making progress. It's just not as focused or efficient as it could really be.

ukbabz

1,547 posts

126 months

Tuesday 21st September 2021
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With a young family, working from home and general lockdown stresses I've found that I prefer going for club social rides which mean fewer new tiles as they tend to be 100km loops. I have a couple of areas where a ride out would add 20-30 to my max cluster which I may try and sneak in by the end of the year. I have grown my Edington score from 47miles (66km) to 50miles (71km)

My Total scores end of 2020
2993 tiles
Max square 22x22
Max Cluster: 788

Vv score - 99.494

Total Score today
3078 tiles, average of 7.760 km per tile
Max square 23x23
Max Cluster: 805

VV score - 99.547



Yellowjack - when seeing your tiling map I'm always amazed you've not started on the Isle of Wight, lovely roads there (if not a tad hilly) and not too many cars.

I've also been comparing my 2020 to 2021 totals and doesn't seem to so bad but much more local.

2020 numbers
882 tiles, average of 5.603 km per tile
Max square 10x10 View map
Max Cluster: 420
VV score - 99.390

2021 number so far
729 tiles, average of 5.666 km per tile
Max square 10x10 View map
Max Cluster: 202
VV score - 98.844

yellowjack

Original Poster:

17,073 posts

166 months

Tuesday 21st September 2021
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ukbabz said:
...Yellowjack - when seeing your tiling map I'm always amazed you've not started on the Isle of Wight, lovely roads there (if not a tad hilly) and not too many cars...
The Isle Of Wight is an odd one. It probably wouldn't do all that much for my Max Sqaure or Max Cluster. At least not without "cheating" and leaving the GPS running on a ferry. Either that or buying/borrowing a kayak. It's also very self-contained, so my thought was to "save it for later". When I've pushed as far as is practical in all other directions I can easily bike to the ferry from home and tackle it in smaller sections over a series of one day rides. Or I could book a campsite on the island and make a week of it. I've got plenty of mapping for the Isle Of Wight already, both 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 scale so I can sketch out a few routes ahead of time. Probably something best left to fill a day when the weather is too miserable for cycling. The great thing about it is that the island is always on one map sheet. None of this having to take four OS maps to grab 2 dozen tiles because they're spread over the edges of where sheets meet.

yellowjack

Original Poster:

17,073 posts

166 months

Tuesday 21st September 2021
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Lately all the new maps I've bought have been the weatherproof version. This means that I can write on them with old OHP pens I have a (dwindling) collection of. And I can erase my scrawl with old ink erasers from the days when we drew things on film on a drawing board instead of clicking around on CAD. It takes a few hours to mark a map from scratch with VV tiles, and to then remove the ones I've already got.

These images are 'before' and 'after' shots from my last big tiling ride out to Hayling Island and the area between Havant and Chichester...





It can feel like slow progress, nibbling away at the edges to extend my Cluster, and I suppose it is. But then you gradually whittle it away until there's a single ride left that jumps your Max Square up by a couple of digits. I'm within one ride of a second, entirely separate, 29x29 Square now. But if I could just nab those four Porton Down tiles (or if there was a way to "credit" them to everyone who has legitimately claimed the surrounding tiles) then I'd already have a 37x37. But there's no point in moaning about that. It's the same for anyone who 'Tiles' in this part of the world. As it is with the limitations of living near the coast as it tapers away to nothing along the length of the West Country. For all my whining about such frustrations, I can see how much harder it would be to start tiling from Falmouth, say, or Truro...

Edited by yellowjack on Tuesday 21st September 10:41

Johno

8,412 posts

282 months

Tuesday 21st September 2021
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Finally moved from 21x21 to 25x25 after taking the MTB for 140kms loop and getting some more off grid tiles here in the Netherlands.

Yellow circle is approximately home and it's not getting that any tile collection is 100kms round trip. Anything closer is in the middle of a lake, a nature reserve without cycling (will walk them) or Schiphol airport (there at least I have a plan smile )



Edited by Johno on Tuesday 21st September 12:55

calvinhobbes

35 posts

64 months

Tuesday 21st September 2021
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I started tile collecting last July as my normal routes were getting a bit stale and I was looking for a bit of a challenge in lieu of 2020's paucity of racing. Have gone from 8x8 up to a handful of 25x25 squares, but progress has inevitably slowed. It's getting much harder to collect tiles and the ability to nip out for a couple of hours during the working day and pick up a couple of tiles has gone. That means that tile collecting is now reduced to one long ride at the weekend and that has to fit around work, family and racing commitments. Longer rides will now head out South and East with the plan to start filling tiles out to the coast. Those are a minimum of 5-6 hour loops, so going to take a while.

I could expand the square/cluster more easily by heading N/NW, but I'm holding off for if/when I start commuting back in to the office in London, when I can start diversifying commuting routes. As it currently stands, the notion of a 3 hour ride to collect tiles in Dartford/Croydon/Streatham holds little appeal.



Stats:
2603 tiles
Max square: 25x25 (x5)
Max Cluster: 926
Veloviewer score: 99.966

yellowjack

Original Poster:

17,073 posts

166 months

Wednesday 22nd September 2021
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A tough ride yesterday. Heavy on the hike-a-bike element, but good fun all the same. Rode 63 miles, but better than that, managed to clean up all the VeloViewer tiles on OS LandRanger 1:50,000 scale sheet number 185 (Winchester and Basingstoke), and as a bonus I'd planned to create a second, entirely separate 29x29 Square, but some unplanned extra tiles meant that ended up stretching out to 32x32. And some single rides should now net increases in both of those Squares if I want to.

Part of me is annoyed that I didn't simply concentrate on the one Max Square. But to be honest? It's nice to have variety and options available. Still irritated by the four 'Porton Down Impossibles' that separate the two Squares, but it is what it is and I'll have to work around them.

So here it is...



Depending upon how you look at it, there are 6 (possibly more?) options for the 29x29, based on where you place the corners. And 3 options for the 32x32. But VeloViewer seems to only credit you with multiple Squares if they are identical in size and wholly separate from one-another.

Whichever way you look at it, it's now decision time. Max Square ping-pong where I alternate between the two Squares, or just concentrate on growing the 32x32 because that's got greater scope for expansion anyway? It'll work itself out in the end, I suppose, but it was a nice surprise when I uploaded the data from yesterday to find I'd managed to get a bigger Max Square than I'd planned for.

Yesterday's ride for those interested... https://www.strava.com/activities/5999929043
To get the Beacon Hill tile I respected the 'Private - No Right Of Way' signs on the Highclere Stud road, and instead marched myself, and my bike, to the top. Hard going, and no realistic chance of riding it up there, but it was legitimate Public Access land and I always use that where it's available. Trespassing is always the last resort. Although I did ride a Public Footpath along an old railway bed, but I'm going with "reasonable use" on that because it was maintained as a farm road. Some other bridleway/byway hike-a-bike at the end too. Turns out I could have ridden up a tarmac road to get to Combe from Buttermere. but my scrawled map marking had obscured the road so I went cross-country instead. Netted me two outlying tiles though, so very much worth doing.

Stats:
Explorer Score: 5540 tiles
Max square: 32x32
Max Cluster: 3625 tiles
Veloviewer score: 99.220

Edited by yellowjack on Wednesday 22 September 12:41

Solocle

3,271 posts

84 months

Wednesday 22nd September 2021
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yellowjack said:
Still irritated by the four 'Porton Down Impossibles' that separate the two Squares, but it is what it is and I'll have to work around them.
I've identified one potential approach to those tiles...

Acquire a human powered aircraft that doesn't suck, climb to 12,000 ft (I believe that's the upper limit of the danger area?), and then fly over those tiles.

Would that be cheating?


Edited by Solocle on Wednesday 22 September 13:07

ukbabz

1,547 posts

126 months

Thursday 23rd September 2021
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Solocle said:
I've identified one potential approach to those tiles...

Acquire a human powered aircraft that doesn't suck, climb to 12,000 ft (I believe that's the upper limit of the danger area?), and then fly over those tiles.

Would that be cheating?


Edited by Solocle on Wednesday 22 September 13:07
Might be easier applying for a job there and going for a run on your lunch break ;-)

Some Gump

12,687 posts

186 months

Thursday 23rd September 2021
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yellowjack said:

]
I'd be tempted to drive west and make that 29x29 bigger, surely 2 rides and you'd have it at 34x34 or even 35x35?

mind you, one major reason is that other than on the closed roads of Ride100, I can't think that riding near London is any fun at all =)