Bounts lets you trade points (known as “bounts”) for vouchers from loads of well known stores, like Sainsbury’s, Amazon, Argos, Pizza Express, Next, M&S, Curry’s, River Island, John Lewis Group, Morrisons etc. A £5 voucher costs 1,389 bounts.

So how do you earn bounts? Well different devices and different activities allow you to claims points. My only activity is walking, so in my case a free membership pays 5 bounts for 7,000 steps, 5 bounts for a 20 minute walk (you need an approved GPS enabled device for this reward). So that’s a maximum of 10 bounts per day. Not many you say, so here’s how to pump things up. Join up with my referral code subscribe54721 and you’ll get 100 bounts (don’t sign up via the Facebook link or it won’t work). Let Bounts tweet via a Twitter account you own and get 5 bounts per day. There’s also Reward Wheel which you get free spins on. Don’t expect to win much on this, though I did win 1,000 bounts just a week after I joined. This was follow soon afterwards with 50 bounts, but otherwise if I have won it’s usually just 5 bounts.

But if you’re into activity you can become a premium+ member (£14.99/year or £1.49/month) and earn 20 bounts for each 7,000 steps up to 60 bounts (3 x 7,000 steps) and 20 bounts per 20 min walk up to 60 bounts (3 x 20 min walk – must be at least 1 hour between walks and at least 4kmph average speed). So with the Twitter bounts that’s 125 bouts per day, which quickly adds up to 1,000 bounts in 8 days. You get loads more spins on the Reward Wheel too. All in all you could earn a £5 voucher every 11 days or around £160 a year. Of course it may be harder to keep up the regime in the winter, which is where monthly premium+ membership may be a good idea.

If you don’t have an activity tracker you get get started by using a smartphone. There’s also an app on Android and ios. Cycling, running and other activities can be tracked via apps like Strava, Runkeeper and Swimtag. You can check out the list here.

Just to get a reality check, 1000 steps is about 0.5 miles, so you need to be walking a little over 10 miles a day to get to this level, but if you’re like me and own a Border Collie, it’s really not that difficult. My plan is to make it pay for the Fenix 3, but in reality I will be doing well if I get a new pair of walking boots each year from it. That’s if they don’t go bust and I lose my £14.99 first. I’ll certainly be claiming back my first £15 asap.

Will and Bob behind our house 8/2/2007

We walked may thousands of miles together, but a heart murmur led to his sudden demise via a horrible series of seizures. We had been out walking as usual only the evening before. The one thing that brought me any comfort was knowing that this wonderful dog could not have had a better life than he did. Just look at our list of walks and you’ll see many of the places we walked together from Ben Nevis to the Gower, from Snowdon to the Cotswolds. With hundreds of walks in the Wye Valley and Brecon Beacons I never had a single incident with him and he never let me down even once.

I remember teaching him how to jump stiles (a must for a walking enthusiast) and he mastered it in seconds. The same went to calling him off a chase. Before this he would go deaf when in a chase (like almost all dogs) and I worried for his safety if the chase crossed a road, but Bob would stop on a sixpence even if he was closing in within feet of a hare. He was exceptionally fast in his youth.

Bob leaping Dog Leap, Cleeve Hill 17/7/2010

I’m lucky that I have so many memories of our time together. My GPS track logs and thousands of photographs make remembering the details a little easier too. We knew he was going to have to slow down so we had just got a new puppy (Ted a Border Collie from farming stock) who was to take over from Bob on the long walks leaving him to take it easier with the shorter walks and some home loving, which he enjoyed so much.

Bob and I walked nearly 2500 miles in his final 12 months. My 2015 New Year resolution was for us to cover at least 2000 miles. When Bob passed away early in September we had already done 1600 miles. With the new pup Ted my miles were cut drastically but I couldn’t let Bob down and I eventually reached our target just before Christmas.

I urge everyone with a pet to check out their vet. Any vet can administer a vaccination or remove a tick, but when you really need medical expertise you don’t want that to be the time you find out they are dangerously understaffed and are relying solely on inexperienced staff. Needless to say we have changed vet to one that cares about more than just money. Really we should have made a formal complaint, but you don’t always think straight in times of such sadness.

Sadly Bob and Ted only had a few days together 1/9/2015

Bob will never be forgotten and will be always loved, but I will be more than happy if one day Ted becomes half the dog he was.

Allergic Asthma is triggered by unknown stimulants, the most common being the likes of dust mites, cat hair, grass, pollen etc. but can be almost anything. The allergy causes thick mucus to form which blocks the airways, again leaving the sufferer out of breath. After years of to-ing and fro-ing between ENT consultants and chest consultants I was eventually diagnosed with Allergic Asthma around 2007. After a couple of years or so my case was justified by my consultant for me to be put on a new drug called Xolair which is an antibody which helps decrease allergic responses in the body. In my case Xolair is administered via three injections every two weeks. Not great, but better than the alternative, which is nothing.

Before I was on Xolair I often needed a course of aural steroids to get things under control, but still things weren’t great. Four months ago I decided to get fit (see my Getting in Shape post). Very quickly I lost 2.5 stones through calorie counting, but more importantly by significant daily exercise. I’ve never been able to run due to the asthma, but I love hill walking. My standard daily walk is 5 miles and has me climbing about 1000′. At weekends and holidays I usually do significantly more. I was about 1 stone over the upper limit of my ideal weight, so now I’m well within the range. Weight just fell off and after only a few weeks I had to go and get all new trousers as all of my old trousers were way too big. My belly disappeared. But most importantly my asthma improved.

My standard route (6 days a week) has a steady incline for about 1.5 miles which goes up 800′. At first I struggled to get up it without stopping. I was gasping for breath. I couldn’t talk. I got to a significant corner 2/3 of the way up and caught my breath. Shortly afterwards I challenged myself to get all the way to the top without stopping. After a couple of weeks I realized that I was no longer gasping like I used to and now I can chat all the way up on the rare occasion I have human company. You should know that I’ve always done a lot of walking, though I’ve really had to push myself in the past due to the asthma, so this was great. Today I went walking in the Brecon Beacons with my son. On our 14 mile walk (with over 3000′ ascent) I couldn’t help but notice how I had to keep waiting for him. Climbing up Pen y Fan other seasoned walkers were stopping periodically for breath, but I had no such problem. When I spoke to my consultant and told him of my revelation he wasn’t surprised, but said that exercise is a great help for asthma. I only wish someone had told me that. Anyway, that’s why I am writing this. If you suffer from this debilitating condition I urge you to give it a serious go. Find a physical activity that you enjoy and really push yourself. For me it was hill walking, but if you don’t live in a hilly area or just don’t like this activity, then find another. You need something that you can do very regularly and something that’s aerobic. Riding a bike, running, going down the gym or an exercise bike at home are some obvious choices.

My peak flow has gone up significantly, I can climb hills like never before, the belly has gone, I comfortably fit skinny jeans (now that’s a first for me), my waist is 3″ less and I feel great. I probably would have lost more weight if it were not for Christmas and my new found hobby of baking bread. My wife has also majorly got into baking cakes, but even all of this high calorie food is not causing a problem. I still get mucus, but it is cleared pretty easily whilst exercising. My dog loves me more than he ever did before and the same goes for the wife!

I nearly bought another 730 as the replacement but thinking about the minor gripes I had with the device I thought that the 740 may resolve most of them.

1. 730 silver cap and rear scratched very easily making it look shabby. The 740 doesn’t have the nice rubberized coating, but its black plastic doesn’t seem to scratch as easily and certainly doesn’t show the scratches as much. You can get a 730 in black, which I did consider.
2. On/off slider switch could be accidentally knocked on the 730, but a really firm two second hold is required on the large rubberized 740 button.
3. The waypoint logging button was always getting fired in my pocket on the 730, so I had to edit out the waypoints in notepad++. Again the 740 button needs a good firm press and hold, this time for just one second.

Canmore GT-740FL Sport Log Book

I believe that when you strip away the case and buttons the two devices are identical except that the 740 has a G-sensor. This means that if the unit is stationary for 5 minutes it will stop logging your position thus saving power tracking satellites and writing to memory. It only takes the slightest movement for it to wake and start logging again and this process is almost instantaneous. If you left the 740 on a table overnight it would hardly drain the battery at all, hopefully leaving you plenty of juice for the next day, whereas the 730 would have been recording the same position all night and may now be drained just when you need it. The 740 claims to be able to run in standby mode for 1500 hours when fully charged.

I’ve just left the same drivers and Canway software on my PC as they are clearly the same files for the 730 and 740. On first power up after traveling thousands of miles to the UK from Taiwan via Germany there was a satellite fix (whilst indoors) within just a few seconds. The truth is that I switched it on, went to redirect my phone, turned round and it already had a fix. Each time I have subsequently turned the device on the fix has been made in less than 5 seconds.

The cap is very hard to remove, though this is probably a major contributor to it being  IPX-6 waterproof. I was concerned that the 370 cap would get lost one day as it comes off pretty easily. It seems very unlikely with the 740.

While the 740 comes with an armband there is no means of attaching a lanyard. The device is marketed as a Sport Log Book, which is a bit silly really. As I have said, it is really the same device as the 730, which is not marketed in this way.

As with the 730 I ordered from digital-paradies (they also sell via Amazon now for a fraction more) and was a bit disappointed that the postage was £7.05 when the same company charges £4.99 to deliver the 730. Units and boxes are the same size and weight.

Standby Test added 9/3/2015

In response to Stratos’ post on the GT-730 topic I decided to conduct a test to see how long the device would run when used for a period each day and left it to go into standby mode.

I put the receiver in my car on 28/1/2015 after fully recharging it. It was configured to record location once every second. The car was being used generally twice a day for short trips (4-8 miles) and 4 or 5 longer ones (25-35 miles). It recorded for around 10 hours over a period of 15 days before the battery finally ran out.

I thought this was pretty good, though you could always charge the device from a portable charger or from your car cigarette lighter. Many newer cars even carry USB ports these days which you can charge from.

My wife showed me the myfitnesspal calorie counter, an Android app which makes counting calories very easy. You are firstly given a target number of calories you can consume each day which is dependent on your height, age, gender, job type and goals. The app is basically a calender/spreadsheet for meals allowing quick look-up of pretty much any food item you can imagine. You can also scan package bar codes too. The app could be improved, but it’s a huge help.

I was shocked to find how calorific many of my regular foods were:

• Bread. I lived on the stuff. It’s terrible but I have to have it. About 150kcal per slice. I eat homemade bread, so a sliced loaf is probably lower in calories purely because slices are smaller.
• Pizza (the homemade variety again). My son’s favourite. With half the flour of a loaf it’s not surprising it’s bad, but 800kcal per person before you put on the toppings is serious stuff. I won’t miss it too much and I can easily make a smaller one for my son.
• Rice and pasta. I love my carbs. Basmati rice isn’t quite as bad as long grain, so I’ll be making a huge batch of vegetable curry soon.
• Cheese. This is another one that I ate far too much of, but not too hard to cut down on. Two slices of cheese on toast use half my daily calorie allowance!
• Chinese and Indian takeaway (always accompanied by a lager or two). Don’t even think about it unless you’ve been highly active all day. It’s very difficult to know the true number of calories too.

On the other side of the coin potatoes and wine weren’t quite as bad as I thought they would be, though I have cut my wine intake considerably. I got into Green Smoothies earlier this year, so that’s a great breakfast and fulfills most of my 5-a-day (I know it needs to be at least 7-a-day) before I start work. Pineapple, strawberries, tuna are great. I tried Quorn for the first time in my life. The mince replacement was edible, but the chicken cube one was horrible. The texture is more like mushroom than chicken, which is not surprising given that it is an edible fungus.

I also decided to increase my midweek walking dramatically. I live in a hilly area so it’s ideal. I mainly work from home, so I’m making time for a lunch break every day if possible. My main route is 3 miles and heads up about 650′. That’s 1.3 miles of good climb and really gets the heart pumping before a short flat section and then back down again. I have an elongated 5.25 mile version of the walk that I like to do in the early evening if work gets in the way of my lunchtime blast. I try to push up the hill as fast as I can.

Dieting alone will work I guess, but exercise should speed things up dramatically. You can also add your burned calories to your daily allowance, so if you’re getting low on points you will be strongly motivated to exercise. I only ever dip very lightly into my exercise calories as I want to lose the weight.

I can never get enough of gadgets, so I bought a heart rate monitor (HRM). These strap across your chest (you can’t see them under clothing) and talk to your Android (or other OS) phone. Apps such as Endomondo and mapmywalk will connect to the HRM via Bluetooth and your heart rate is monitored which in turn calculates your calories burned. My 3 mile route burns about 700kcal and my 5.5 mile route burns about 1150kcal, so on top of my 1360kcal allowance I could eat/drink very well if I wanted to. The calories burned will drop as I get fitter.

At weekends I always walk around 12-15 miles and usually on pretty tough terrain. Last weekend was my first weekend with the HRM and a 12 mile walk in the Brecon Beacons starting with a 2000′ climb over the first 2 miles (that’s about as tough as it gets for me) burned well over 4000kcal. I do have to ask myself how I ever managed to get overweight burning this amount of calories each weekend, but it just goes to show how much over-eating I was clearly doing.

I’m about 3.5 weeks into the regime now. A terrible cold shortly after I started didn’t help as a bad chest made the walking difficult. I’ve lost just over a stone and am now almost in the accepted weight band for my height/age. I plan to lose a couple more stone, hopefully by Christmas, but it may take longer. After such a short time I’m already feeling much better about myself. Today I started to jog on the downhill sections. I’ve never been able to run due to allergic asthma , but this is my long term goal. My dog Bob is loving it too. He’s 9 years old now, but when the wife isn’t at work he’s out most of the day with one or other of us and we all walk together once or twice a week. As Errol Brown once said, “Everyone’s a winner baby, that’s no lie!”

There are many waterproof materials on the market, the best known brand is Gore-tex and the other most favoured is eVent. While both are very waterproof eVent has the reputation of being more breathable, but the downside is that eVent requires a lot more maintenance. I use my jacket all the time and I really am not interested in washing it every couple of weeks. Also Gore-tex is arguably more rugged, but that depends on the Gore-tex product you buy. Gore-tex comes in

• Paclite (very light like a kagool)
• Active (the most breathable, but not so tough)
• Pro Shell (very durable and very waterproof).
• Pro (brand new product to replace Pro Shell)

Pro Shell has recently been replaced by Pro, which is just as durable, but also claims to be 28% more breathable. I was very keen to get a Gore-tex Pro jacket, so after failing to find a Haglofs Atlas Long I decided on TNF Point Five NG from their well reputed Summit Series. While the 2013/14 model used Gore-tex Pro the version from the previous year is made from Pro Shell.

The jacket retails for £270, but can be found for as little as £215, though finding it in a desirable colour for this price can be more difficult. I bought from here.

My comments

Firstly, the jacket looks great. I went for TNF black (matt black, a touch of grey rather than jet black). The TNF logo is OK on the front, but I really dislike having it on the back of the jacket too. A current trend that will hopefully disappear. My old Axis had a beautifully stitched logo and stitched “Goretex Pro Shell” on the cuffs and consequently looks like new after all these years. This jacket uses transfers, though the subtle “Goretex Pro” in gloss black on the cuffs is nice. There’s a “Summit Series” logo on each shoulder too, which is inoffensive.

There are no external wind flaps on the zips (there is an internal one on the main zip). I guess zip technology has improved in recent years as this is the standard now. There are just the two very large hand warming pockets which are designed to avoid rucksack straps. The waist drawstring pulls appear inside the pockets. This seems like a gimmick to me, as I’ve never had a problem with standard drawstrings and I don’t really want to feel them inside the pockets. Personally I really miss not having an internal secure pocket for keys as I don’t always carry a rucksack and not all of my trousers have this feature. There’s no map pocket, though I don’t miss this personally. Cuff adjustment is via familiar hook and fastener material, though externally a modern rubbery textured material is used. All zip fasteners and drawstrings are in an eye-catching bright red.

Pit zips are becoming more common on higher end walking jackets.These huge zips under the armpits allow cooling and reduce sweat and are a great idea. Even in light rain I have found you can leave them open and the rain doesn’t come in. You can obviously adjust the size of the apertures, though adjusting while you are wearing the jacket is not always  easy.

The hood has a stiff peak, though there is no wire like my old Berghaus, which could be moulded into the required shape. It is helmet compatible and has a really good drawstring adjustment. The end result is that it fits really well to just about anyone and the visibility is excellent. The downside is that it does not fold away, so it’s always flopping about. I loved the way my Axis hood easily folded into a padded collar. The main zip comes over the chin as you would expect. There’s some soft lining material to stop it rubbing the chin but it doesn’t do it’s job. This is because the material curls and the liner doesn’t make contact with the chin. Poor design, but no different from the Axis.

Overall the jacket is very light for a hard shell and water resistance has performed as I had hoped. The big plus is the breath-ability so far resulting in a cooler experience than with previous jackets. The DWR (water beading) is of course brilliant when new, but this quickly reduces. The jacket is comfortable and long enough for me (I have a very long body, so the Berghaus let me down in this respect) without being too long. One of the great things about Goretex Pro is that you don’t have to be too precious with it. Catching it on a branch or scuffing on a rock leave no lasting signs in my experience. The proof of the jacket is, of course, how well it performs over time. I’ve had the jacket for three months now, so only about 20 outings. I’m very pleased with it so far. Hopefully it will not be used for a few months now with summer arriving at last!

Berghaus Explorer IV (2/10)

Winter 2006 – winter 2006

These fabric Goretex lined boots were very comfortable for about five minutes. At the time that I got them I was discovering my local disused railways and the brambles on the overgrown lines ripped the stitching almost immediately. The boots leaked like a sieve, but I had to live with them for a while, as I couldn’t justify a new pair after only a few weeks. My wife has had a few pairs of these boots (I can’t convince her to get leather boots) but the last pair lasted about two months. I found them to be a complete waste of money.

Merrell Chameleon GTX (8/10)

Spring 2007 -

I bought these shoes after getting soaked in cheap walking shoes from dew on an otherwise beautiful morning. I wore them regularly through spring and summer (and then some) for three years, but they are still going now. The Goretex didn’t seem to last for long and was probably a waste of money. You can get a non-Goretex version, which should be cooler as well as cheaper. I found the shoes to be very slippery on rocks and even tarmac sometimes. I stopped wearing them when I started getting bad ankle problems. I’d drive home after a long walk and found I was barely be able to stand when I got out of the car. I can’t say for sure that it was the shoes, but I changed back to boots and the problem went away very quickly. I still use them occasionally for less demanding summer walks.

Braisher Hillmaster GTX (8/10)

Autumn 2007 – Autumn 2010 and Autumn 2010 – Summer 2012

My first leather boots were a great success. My feet were now lovely and dry. I got blisters the first time I wore each of the two pairs I have owned, but they were fine after that. I could not call them a comfortable pair of boots, but dryness is a big plus. The first pair were worn less that 50% of the time in conjunction with the Merrell shoes, the second pair were probably worn 75% of the time, hence they only last 2 years. The first pair were still working when I replaced them, though the creases on the toes looked like they wouldn’t last much longer. The soles of my feet got quite sore in them and I did try an insole in them, but there wasn’t enough room and this caused the tops of my feet a lot of pain, so I had to remove them. I believe that hard skin was the cause of the sore feet. This was quickly rectified with an Express Pedi, but the boots were definitely a contributory factor. I was generally pleased with the Hillmasters, though they are not perfect. The second pair rotted through the uppers, rather annoyingly just as we arrived in Scotland for a week of walking.

Salomon mid GTX fabric boots

Summer 2010

I can’t remember what model these were, but they proved too small despite getting the same size as my other boots, so I barely ever wore them. These were intended to replace the Merrells for spring and summer use only, but providing more ankle support.

The North Face Jannu II GTX (4/10)

Autumn 2012 – Autumn 2013

I’d read a review where someone thought these were the best boots ever, and I did manage to find them at a very good price (£85 instead of the normal £135), but my experience was not great. The boots claim every technical advantage possible, but I found them quite inflexible, and the heel particularly so. The boots are quite a high cut, which has it’s use, but the main problem was that the leather uppers were far too thin. The toe rand started splitting very quickly and then grass and the like got caught in it and it just got worse. My feet were getting damp within six months. Stupidly I didn’t send them back and after a very long dry summer, by the time it was wet again they were a year old. I got home one very wet day with feet totally soaked only to find a huge hole in the side of one boot through the leather. Nothing of any significance had happened. I found this to be totally unacceptable in a boot. I contacted TNF, but their response was unhelpful and I wasn’t going to throw good money after bad by sending them back, so I binned them. I just won’t buy from The North Face again. I should also mention that these boots were quite harsh on the feet and had a very stiff sole.

Scarpa Delta Active GTX (10/10)

Autumn 2013 -

While researching I really struggled to find a new pair of boots, as every time I thought I’d found a good pair I then found several reviews telling of awful experiences that some people had with them. My last three pairs of boots had lasted 3, then 2, then 1 year, so I needed something that would last and that was going to cost a bit more. I managed to get these for £150 (normally close to £200), though the hassle to get Go Outdoors to honour their price promise was a painful exercise. The boots are really well built and super comfortable. They are pretty much made from a single piece of leather, so there is very little stitching to fail or let in water apart from at the heel. The HS12 leather a good thickness. Even the tongue is made from the same piece of leather. There’s a good rand with an unobtrusive toe bumper. The detail goes down to the D-rings which have little pulleys in them. This reduced friction means you can easily pull the laces tight along their full length. There’s the standard two pairs of hooks at the top.

Sadly my pair had a defect in the leather where they absorbed moisture leaving black patches in the leather and leaving my feet damp right from the first outing. The boots were sent back for inspection and a new pair arrived two days ago. Scarpa after sales was very good at sorting this issue. I gave the new pair an outing yesterday and again there were no issues on the first outing (Braisher always gave me blisters) and the leather is not showing the same problem. My feet feet much less battered than in previous leather boots too. I have great hopes for these boots, but so far, so good.

Scarpa Delta Active GTX update : 24/2/2014

I’ve had these boots for three months now and walked 260 miles in the wettest winter on record in the UK. The boots are extremely comfortable to wear and my feet have remained dry, as you would expect. I often used to come home with sore feet, but that has completely stopped. The sore heel I got after 10+ miles has also disappeared. The leather does seem to absorb more moisture than I am used to, but it’s not been a problem so far. I’ve been religiously cleaning the boots after every outing (it’s always muddy) and I’ve treated them 3 times with Contour Boot Cream, which is a silicone type wax to aid waterproofing and keep the leather supple. So far I am 100% happy with the Scarpa Delta Active GTX boots. Let’s hope it stays that way for a good while yet.

Berghaus Explorer Ridge GTX (6/10)

Summer 2012 – Summer 2013 and Summer 2013 -

These are my son’s boots. The first pair rotted through, but that was more to do with him not looking after them to be fair. I can’t comment too much on them, but his feet did stay dry and he has no complaints, but teenagers don’t always communicate too well. I got the first pair because John Lewis were selling off size 12 cheap, but the replacement price was only about £90 and there’s not much else available in that price range. These were his first pair of proper leather boots. He’d mostly had Karrimor fabric boots (some were eVent lined), but he was growing so fast he never wore a pair out before they stopped fitting him. His first pair of walking boots were at about 7 and he took adult sizes then. It’s so unfair that you pay VAT on adult shoes, even for a seven year old. I’ve made him look after his current boots better, so I’ll update this when there’s something to add.

Retailers

I’ve bought from Trek and Field (my nearest shop has now closed), Millets (mostly for my son), Go Outdoors, Blacks and the Internet.

T&F offered no advice, but service was prompt and I pretty much knew what I wanted. Go Outdoors has always been a terrible experience. Apart from my last visit it has always taken 15 minutes just to find an assistant so I could request the boots I wanted to try on. The shop assistant has then promptly disappeared behind a door offering no advice at all. I say this because we are always being told that the inflated retail prices are there because we are paying for the advice and expertise. Cotswold Outdoors has a very  good reputation in this area, but their boots are expensive and there’s no store near me despite being quite near the Cotswolds. My experiences in Millets uncovered no knowledge of the products at all. The store manager was clearly not an outdoors type even. When buying my son’s first pair of boots I asked if they were waterproof. The answer was something like, “Well there’s a label that says ‘waterproof’ on them, so they must be”. We went straight out on a walk and his feet were soaking within minutes. My first rule of buying cheap boots has since been, “If they have a label saying ‘waterproof’ on the boot you can safely bet they are anything but waterproof”. Blacks was the best experience. The salesperson clearly was a walker and knew a fair amount about the products. The Internet is usually the cheapest way to get your boots and you can send them back as long as you’ve not worn them outside, though you will probably have to pay for the postage. The John Lewis buy was good because I knew I could just drop them at our local Waitrose if they didn’t fit, as our nearest JL is a fair distance away.

I mentioned earlier about the Go Outdoors price promise. It took me 30 minutes to go through this in the store. The broadband they used was diabolical, timing out all the time. I showed them an email I had where the store I was getting the price promise against had confirmed they would hold my size in the Scarpas, but it still took forever and they were reluctant to accept the evidence until the store manager stepped in. I was in the store early, but a poor lady joined the queue behind me only to be ignored by staff for 15 minutes. I would have dumped my purchase and left if I was her. All this time another member of staff (sometimes two) were standing about doing nothing. It was embarrassing. The staff at one point asked me to ring the other store to confirm the deal. Unbelievable. Two staff members needed to get out a calculator to work out 10% of the price (you really should have paid attention in school). Finally there is the con that is the discount card. You don’t pay 10% less than the price match, because you are forced to buy their “discount” card. I use the term loosely. They were still £20 more expensive here than at a small independent shop, even with the discount card.

There were two problems with geonames. Firstly it was relatively slow (it’s a web service) and secondly, there are limits to how many requests you are allowed to make. This isn’t a problem for this site, but it was for mapRoute.

SRTM data has data for pretty much the surface of the planet taken at 90 metre intervals. This should be enough for my purposes. There is some OS data that’s also freely available that details the UKs elevation at 50m intervals, but it requires the location to be sent in British Grid Reference format, which I haven’t got round to looking at yet and from brief research I know it won’t be easy. (Update: I have since implemented British Grid Ref. conversion in mapRoute, but to the OS elevation data).

The issue with map related elevation data often arises when you are walking at an angle to a very steep incline, say along a cliff top. The GPS measurement only needs to be a few feet out and it will report you as being at the bottom of the cliff, then the top etc. In fact, if you have elevation data for every 90m only you could still see this problem even with an accurate GPS track log. I walk a lot in the hills, so this is a significant issue for me.

Historically I have reduced my track log points to just 100 before uploading to this site as I didn’t want too much data slowing down the process. Imagine the situation when you’re walking along a concave cliff top or ridge. In reducing the track points a straight line between two separated points now has you down at the bottom of a cliff given the above example.

Another issue occurred when two points were at a similar elevation, but somewhere between them the elevation changed considerably. Imagine walking over the top of a hill, but the only elevations recorded were at the base of the hill on either side. This scenario would report no ascent being made. The code provided by osola allows for creating intermediate points every 3″ (seconds) of a degree, which equates to approximately 90m. This too makes the resulting elevation profile too jumpy for my purposes, so I added an option to alternatively display at 6″ intervals. There’s no precise science to this. It’s not always the same interval that works best for a route, hence leaving the option to the user.

Integrating the data into a graph meant I needed to return the distance of each point from the start of the route as each section is not of equal length. I would then plot a scatter graph and join the points, so it looks like a line graph. This is where the process fell down when I originally looked at it using GPSr elevation data. Then the graph looked great, but was not accurate. For instance, the peak of a hill may not appear to be the same distance into the route on the graph and on the map. The only point locations you could guarantee were the first and the last. Returning the distance for each point gets around this issue. Alternatively you could return points at fixed intervals only.

Along the way I Ajax-ified the returning of the data and returned the data as JSON. This led on to adding Ajax to much of the site (particularly the walk page). Then I noticed how all my pages were built on HTML tables. This is considered bad practice these days, so I then went about replacing them with DIVs and CSS. Finally, I unified my buttons and made may waypoints display on all relevant routes, not just the one they had been created against.

All of the above was a great learning process, which meant I could then plug in very similar code to mapRoute. The returning of data was so quick that I was even able to return the cursor location elevation as the user moves it across the map. Note: This is turned off for basic users. I only downloaded the data for the UK (344MB), but apart from disk space and download effort there’s no reason why you couldn’t get data for any location.

Starting out

One morning I woke up with an idea. Wouldn’t it be great to have a web application that allowed me and other walkers/hikers to plan routes. mapRoute was born. There are a few similar apps, but they are all pretty limited. I wanted better mapping (UK Ordnance Survey 1:25K), ability to create and edit routes easily, then store them on the server and download them at will so I can load them onto my GPS receiver. As the project progressed my requirements grew and grew, but this was the starting point. The project is about to go live, so I thought I would share the experience over the next few posts.

At the start I had to do some reading and quickly discovered that my minimum requirements would be an understanding of the following:

HTML

A few years ago this was all most web sites had. It’s just a markup language that allows you to create a simply formatted document on the web. I’d used this for years and there’s really not much to it. You can’t create a web app with HTML, but you do need it as a starting point. HTML5 is now available, which provides much more functionality than past versions.

JavaScript

This scripting language runs in your browser and brings a web app to life. JavaScript can interface to databases APIs, variable data and the Document Object Model (DOM), which is really the HTML. I knew a tiny bit of JavaScript, but I would have to learn much more. This was to be my steepest learning curve. Fortunately I saw my brother-in-law the weekend I started and he gave me a recent JavaScript book thick enough to club a bunch of 70′s DJs to death.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets allow you to format web pages while separating formatting from content. You can do much more than you’d think with it, so it was important that I got to grips with CSS quickly.

AJAX

Ajax is cool. It allows you to communicate with a data source (database, API, web site) without reloading the page. Remember how you used to fill out a form, press submit and the page would re-load. This was the only way to pass data. Now think of when you type something into the Google search engine. After each character the page shows matches with what you’ve typed so far. Ever wondered how it does this? It’s Ajax. Each time a key is pressed Ajax sends the string back to the server, which returns a set of results… all without a submit key or a page re-load. The search button is now superfluous on that page. Another example relevant to my project is Bing maps. As you move the map more tiles automatically load. It’s not magic, it’s Ajax.

PHP

(PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a pretty straightforward server-side language. All of my Ajax calls PHP code. The PHP code makes database calls, gets elevation data or makes calls to APIs. I needed to write some proxy code to allow calls to be make to external domains. As session variables are server-side I also use PHP to deal with these. When I started this site I originally used Perl as my server-side language. Personally I find PHP is much easier and have converted all Perl to PHP on this site now too.

mySQL

This is an open source database manager that is supported by many web hosts, including mine. As I am a SQL Server DBA, this should be a piece of cake for me. At last, an easy bit.

JSON

I am very familiar with XML due to my job, but all GPS users should know some xml, as gpx files are really XML data. It’s a method of representing data in text form, so it’s ideal for passing between applications. JSON is a lightweight and simple substitute for XML. It tends to be more popular for API and web services. It is pretty straight forward to pick up.

APIs and other stuff

Bing Maps 7.0 was chosen because of it’s ability to provide 1:25K OS maps, something that the Ordnance Survey themselves couldn’t do. Geocaching Live API was used to provide calls directly into the geocaching database, currently holding over 2M active geocaches worldwide (150K in UK alone).

There would also be various libraries to provide graphs, date entry and even a little jQuery to enhance the user experience, but I decided to keep this to a minimum.

Satmap Active 10 Plus

• Needs to come with 1:50K GB OS maps as these are expensive to buy separately.
• Really old technology (Windows Mobile CE).
• Known to lock up periodically.
• A bit big and clunky, but a nice big screen.
• Poor battery life, mostly solved by included battery pack introduced with plus model.
• Reported good CS from Satmap.
• Expensive additional 1:25K GB maps available.
• No routing, though this is not an issue for me as I can use other devices.
• Weatherproof rather than IPX7 waterproof.

Garmin GPSMAP 62st

• I’m not sure if the accuracy is any better than the Oregon, I know it’s not as good as the CSx.
• Looks similar to CSx, poorer accuracy, same low resolution, small screen and big device.
• IPX7 waterproof, like almost all proper handheld GPSrs.
• Garmin list this as “top of the line”, but what does that mean? If you compare it to the Oregon 450 on their site it beats it on nothing, but loses on a few things.
• 3-axis compass. Oregon 450 also has this and it didn’t impress me over the old 2-axis compass on the CSx.
• Reads custom maps (and Discoverer maps).
• I know I can get an almost new one for just over £200 with a little luck. Should be easy after Christmas.

Garmin Fēnix

• Cool, wristwatch GPSr.
• Brand new release.
• No maps, but represents a trail and can follow a route.
• £350.
• Looks promising, but needs a while to mature yet. Not for me just yet.

Let me know if you know of any good reviews of these items. I want something like Patrick Roeder‘s excellent CSx review from all those years ago.