Month: October 2005

SLOW is going to have a Micro-O section at the OK Nuts Trophy regional event at the end of November, on the middle part of the open courses. Interesting – I might “run up” at this event to try it out. Micro-O is a bit like timed Trail-O – it’s about picking the right control from a cluster of controls (with no codes on them) based on your interpretation of the map. Many long time orienteers will not like the change to the traditional classic format, but the OK Nuts Trophy is normally an unconventional race, and Micro-O in it should make things intersesting.

The point in Great Britain furthest from the coast is “just east of Church Flatts Farm, about a mile south-east of Coton in the Elms, Derbyshire” according to the Ordnance Survey in a snippet in this old BBC news article. (Update – featured in a later BBC news article here, and confirmed by the OS here.)

I see another challenge – getting to this point, and then biking from here to the coast. Here is the point, from zooming out, I can see there are coastal inlets that define this point – the Severn Channel near Glocester, the Runcorn near Liverpool, and the Wash near Kings Lynn. I don’t really fancy plowing through Birmingham to get to the first, and ending up in Liverpool will be a long way from my London base, so I’ll probably be heading East. National Cycle Route 63 is pretty much the route needed. Watch this space.

Also, Luke has been doing a similar kind of “targeting tourism” by trigpointing recently.

Staying on the geographic theme, a couple of cartography blogs: Mapping Hacks (I want the book!) and Ed Parsons, OS CTO.

I completed the east-most section of my cross-England bike ride on Sunday, going from Rochester to Whitstable, a major seaside resort in North Kent, on a beautifully sunny day for October. It was one of the longer days – 45 miles – but, as you would expect for the Thames/Medway, it was exceedingly flat.

I really did like Whitstable and there was some great parts on the route (see the last 10 photos on my x-England set) – the section near Colyer was really nice and uniquely “Kent”, and Newington seemed so nice that I wanted to buy a house there now (has a station on a line directly into London too) but I also passed some of the nastiest parts of the route so far. In particular, the long trawl through the industrial estates of Sittingbourne was depressing, and made Sittingbourne seem like it was entirely made of industrial estates (maybe it is?) Also, leaving Sittingbourne to the north was exceedingly grim. Some gypsies driving around in old Fords assured me that the way north was the route, but the burnt out cars and rubbish tips made me suspect something dodgy going on – so I went east instead from Sittingbourne, passing through what must be one of the most socially deprived areas in England.

Leaving Sittingbourne behind though, the approach to Whitstable was lovely, and the first glimpse of the open North Sea was a fitting end to the x-England journey. Now I just need to do the western half…

(Slight edits)