My route from last night’s Street-O race in South Hampstead.
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South Hampstead Street-O
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Flow Map
While search for a way to visualise flows between schools and universities in England, I came across this excellent bit of software by Doantam Phan et al from Stanford: Flow Map (paper). It was presented at Infoviz 2005.
It’s a Java application, simple to install, and with the addition of an appropriately formatted data file, you can have a flow map up quickly. The software allows points to be moved around to declutter the visualisation – allowing a good balance between geographic accuracy and clarity.
Here’s the English universities that Southend-on-sea school pupils choose to go to – N and W England cropped out for simplicity:
London and the other multi-university cities are “exploded” but the universities retain their geographic equivalence.
Here’s the event’s I’m planning on running in over the next couple of months. Assuming the weather’s nice, of course. At this time of year, though, I tend to just stay in bed if it’s pouring with rain…
- 21 November – Sheffield Chasing Sprint – forecast not looking great, but should be a great set of two back-to-back races. Final race in the Nopesport Urban League series.
- 22 November – Epping Forest East – one of my favourite areas, and cycling distance from home.
- 28 November – Finsbury parkrun
- 29 November – OK Nuts Trophy – my club’s biggest terrain event of the year.
- 3 December – Primrose Hill Street-O
- 5 December – Finsbury parkrun
- 6 December – HAVOC Langdon Hills local
- 8 December – Putney Street-O
- 12 December – Finsbury parkrun, or HH Verulamium local
- 13 December – Cannock Chase national or QECP regional
- 19 December – Finsbury parkrun
- 25/26 December – Edinburgh parkrun?
- 27 December – ELO Festive Frolic?
- 1 January – JOK training event in the Highlands?
- 9 January – Finsbury parkrun
- 10 January – Hemsted local
- 12 January – Kingston Street-O
- 16 January – Finsbury parkrun
- 17 January – Sheepleas & Effingham regional
- 23 January – Finsbury parkrun
- 24 January – CSC Qualifiers, Leith Hill?
- 30 January – Edinburgh City Race
- 31 January – JOK Chasing Sprint, Edinburgh
Orienteering is not an Olympic sport, it is however a grassroots activity which just happens to have a number of venues (some existing, some potential) close to the site of the 2012 London Olympics. As such, the sport of orienteering could benefit from any increase in interest in sports in this part of east London, caused by the approaching Games.
The above map (basemap by Cloudmade, based on OpenStreetMap data) shows existing and possible venues for orienteering events around the Olympic Park site which is shaded in red:
- Hackney Marshes and Mabley Green. A very large (400 acre) venue, although not particularly interesting – essentially football pitches as far as the eye can see. However, there is enough of interest for a local event, particularly if the two parks on the west side of the Lee Navigation are included. A hidden gem just in the south part is Wick Woodland, a proper, dense wood with a maze of paths. Sadly, the Waterworks Nature Reserve, just to the north of the marked area, is likely to be out-of-bounds. I believe LOK have an old black-and-white map of the main part of the marshes, from the eighties. The East Marsh is due to be tarmacked over and turned into a giant car park for the Games themselves.
- Victoria Park is another large (200 acre) green area, LOK mapped it many years ago and it was used quite regularly for events, up to around 10 years ago. I understand they are about to re-map it and it will hopefully be used for an event next summer.
- Bow – this area was first used for a Street-O race in September – event results.
- Queen Mary and Mile End Park was used for a SLOW park race in 2008. The campus area is small but allows for exciting sprint racing, the park is also narrow but has some interesting features. A new bridge across the Regent’s Canal has just opened, which will allow the map to be expanded for a similar race in the future.
- The Isle of Dogs including Canary Wharf and Limehouse – this is an aspiration, no orienteering map exists yet, and organising a race here would be a huge logistical challenge, but this would make a super area for a city race, possibly in 2011 or 2012.
- Greenwich Park – DFOK have created an orienteering map of this hilly 180 acre royal park, which is also a venue for the 2012 Olympics. It was used for an event in March, and there will be another one in April 2010.
- Lea River Park – at the moment, the useable area – Three Mills Green and the House Mill – is possibly too small even for the smallest event, and there is no existing map. However, the surrounding area is due to be developed into various new parks over the next six years, so a map of this area could grow with the developments.
- West Ham Park – quite small (80 acres), but pleasant, could probably sustain a small summer park race. Not yet mapped for orienteering.
- Wanstead Flats – a large, but very flat and simple area, unfortunately split up into three sections by two busy roads. Already mapped by CHIG.
- Wanstead Park – a ruined, historic estate, very dense vegetation in places, but used by CHIG fairly regularly for summer events – would possibly be more suited for winter events due to the extent of the vegetation growth!
Also:
- Regent’s Park (LOK) – not on the map here. Newly mapped by LOK, they are keen to stage an event in this royal park which will also be a venue for the London Olympics.
- The Olympic Park itself. Much of it will become available to the public, and therefore potentially for orienteering, in summer 2013.
No orienteering club is based in the East End – indeed, London’s four orienteering clubs sort of converge on this point. London OK (LOK) is based around Hampstead and is generally active in London’s north-west quadrant. Chigwell OC (CHIG) is based around Epping Forest in the north-east. Dartford OK (DFOK) generally runs events in the south-east of the capital. Finally, South London OW (SLOW) is mainly based in the south-west, around Wimbledon and Kingston. There are a couple of SLOW maps in the East End – but only because I live there and have created them!
This means that a collaboration between the four clubs would make sense, for any London 2012-themed series planned for the future.
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Carcassonne
I wouldn’t normally fly several hundred miles just to go to an orienteering event – but then, an orienteering event in the Cité de Carcassonne in southern France was never going to to be just another orienteering event.
Actually there were three events in the one weekend, a middle race on the Saturday afternoon, the Carcassonne sprint in the evening, and a long race on the Sunday morning, which made it an even better reason to travel down.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the weekend was that I enjoyed the other two events as much as the “headline” sprint in Carcassonne – indeed, I thought the middle race, held near Montlaur, around 20km away, was on some of the most amazing terrain I have ever run on in fourteen years of competing. It is difficult to describe – imagine tinder-dry bare earth ridges and gullies – stable enough to run on, but often too steep to run off the edge of. The steepest edges, typically those steeper than 45 degrees, were marked with “impassable cliff” lines on the map. There were two pockets of this intense terrain separated by a run through some of the very many vineyards in the area. The bottoms of the gullies tended to be guarded by very prickly bushes, so staying high was the less painful, if more technical, option. I was pleased with my time of just over an hour for the 3.8km course – getting up any speed was difficult in the intensely technical and physical terrain. Orienteering doesn’t really get any technical – or enjoyable – than this. Multiple world-champion and local boy Thierry was also running my course – and finished in exactly half my time – amazing!
I was impressed with the facilities that COORS (the organising club) had laid on for a relatively small-scale event – with commentary, traders and a bar. If only the French had heard of portaloos, it would be a perfectly organised event!
Then in the evening, it was time for the sprint race through the medieval cobbled streets of old Carcassonne. The walled city is quite small but is on a steep hill and has two complete sets of walls, with various doorways, passages and other intricate map detail. Our start times were at nearly 11pm, the reason for the timing of the event became clear the following day – the streets are crammed with tourists during the day. However, the late Saturday night start meant we had to decide if and when to eat and drink. Running on a full stomach and after a few glasses of wine might not be the best idea, but you can’t really go to France and not enjoy the local specialities…
The race itself was short and intense, with 17 controls and 190m of climb in the 2.7km course. The route led in and out of the city several times, including a steep climb up a grassbank, and running through the (dry!) moat to the finish line. The walls are floodlit at night, but there were plenty of dark passages and alleyways where headtorches were needed. I finished 9 minutes down on Thierry, perhaps the only time I’ll be so close to the world’s top orienteer, although to be fair he did get around in 20 minutes.
Unfortunately Jayne twisted her ankle, falling in one of the dark pits on the course, so it looked like getting back to our B&B (in the countryside overlooking the city) could be a challenge, until we managed to persuade an organiser to give us a lift back. By now, the big meal, wine, two races, and 4am start were starting to catch up with me…
Finally, on Sunday, was the long race, back in Montlaur. The distance was less than 10km (with 400m of climb), but I was bracing myself for an epic, and so it proved to be. I made it back in 110 minutes, having spent 15 minutes on the wrong hillside about half-way around the course – one of those awful mistakes compounded by various features apparently fitting to the map. Although the landscape was largely open, it was full of vineyards, a blaze of yellows and reds, but tricky (and painful) to get around. There were some pockets of extreme complexity on the map, and also some epic legs – No. 2 to 3 was 2.2km across the valley and up a hill. Still, a rewarding challenge. Thierry again impressed by running at roughly double my speed.
After the race was the prize ceremony – there were a few other Brits there and impressively, quite of them got prizes – it says a lot about the area that the winners got a bottle of wine and a bottle of pressed apple juice, and the runners up got the bottle of wine.
Then it was time to head back to the airport and back home – but not before a combination of Google Maps missing a major bypass, and the reluctance of the French to sign destinations via their motorway network, on their signs, meant we took an unexpected detour through various villages on our way to Toulouse.
A top quality orienteering weekend.
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Finsbury Parkrun
I made it along to the second Finsbury parkrun this morning, having missed the first due to a trip to France. It takes just over an hour to my “traditional” parkrun location at Bushy Park, so, after an evening out in Camden, the 25 minute cycle to Finsbury Park was definitely a preferred option. It was a cool, crisp morning, quite sunny. The park was surprisingly busy for 9am on a Saturday, with other joggers, BMT clients, cyclists, and children in the playground. There were 38 people for race – as the series has just started, the numbers will probably grow, but it meant I got a top-10 finish today.
The course is two laps of the park, with a meander inwards to the top of the hill, from the northernmost point of the perimeter road, near the end of each loop. The meander starts with a short, sharp (1 in 8) climb up to the top, my km splits (3:51, 4:10, 3:51, 4:11, 4:07) suggest the hill, in the 2nd and 5th kilometres, seemed to take around 15 seconds out of my time each time it was visited. There was another, more gradual hill in the first and fourth km. I finished 7th, in 20:11, but didn’t push hard, so should be able to beat that comfortably in the future. I’m going to try and make it to as many of these ones as possible, in the next few months, unless an even more local one starts!
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Google Maps – Nearly Alright
There’s been some discussion about the large number of small-scale mistakes present in Google Maps – there were always a few, but that number has increased dramatically recently as Google has included new sets of POIs.
What I find is that the map looks pretty good if you just need to drive around an area, but once you zoom and study it in detail, the bugs appear. Of course, if you don’t know the area, you probably aren’t going to notice the problems unless you really go looking for them, so perhaps it’s still “fit for purpose”.
My local area (pretty close to central London, not somewhere random in the countryside) has some real howlers – but then, people driving through aren’t going to notice:
Never mind, OpenStreetMap to the rescue:
For me, it’s particularly pleasing that OpenStreetMap is now becoming more accurate than Google Maps in these respects, rather than just catching up – as long as there’s a keen local contributor in each area. Adding simple (POI) data to OSM still isn’t quite as easy as it could be, although it’s much improved with recent Potlatch updates, and Mapzen looks like it could make the process easier still.
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Meath Bridge Opening
So, the Regent’s Canal has a new bridge across it – the Meath Bridge, connecting Meath Gardens in Bethnal Green, to Mile End Park in Bow, opened this morning. It was built partly with funds from the Sustrans Connect2 award – as one of the 70 or so projects in the scheme, that won the BIG Lottery fund TV competition at the end of 2007.
The bridge isn’t quite as useful as it could be, as an east-west link, because both the approaches to it are from a northerly direction – the eastern access ramp curves north to avoid the access road to Mile End Climbing Wall, and the western access ramp curves slightly north to avoid the new housing development on the south side of Meath Gardens. In fact it’s probably most useful for getting from Stepney Green to Victoria Park (i.e. a SW-NE link). Still, it’s a nice crossing to have, and in orienteering terms is particularly exciting, because it will allow future orienteering events in Mile End Park to easily include Meath Gardens, significantly increasing the “green” area of the map. Now, if only the link under the railway bridge to Queen Mary University could be opened…
Of course, the bridge is now on OpenStreetMap:
Let’s see how many months/years it takes before the bridge appears on Google Maps, Ordnance Survey mapping, or even Sustrans’ own map.
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5 Races in 9 Days
I’ve been doing quite a lot of orienteering/running recently:
- 10 October – Richmond Park second anniversary parkrun
The first time I’ve done a parkrun not at Bushy Park – Richmond is certainly hillier. - 11 October – 1st Chester City Race
Quite a way from London, but I enjoyed running around the ancient streets and The Rows. The pics above and below are from the race route. - 13 October – Chelsea/Battersea Street-O
A world away from my Bow Street-O last month, and SLOW’s biggest ever Street-O attendance. - 17 October – 1st Cambridge City Race
Delayed from February, finally a chance to run around and through various Cambridge colleges. - 18 October – CompassSport Cup Final at Fineshade, Peterborough
A smaller than normal SLOW team came 6th in this brambly area.
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Static Street-O Routemaps with OSM
Here’s a map showing my route around the streets of Chelsea and Battersea at last night’s SLOW street-race:
My GPS didn’t acquire a good signal for the first couple of km, so I recreated my route using the following:
- Using Bike Route Toaster I drew my course out. Important – the Data setting *must* be first set to “OSM”, to ensure you don’t inadvertently introduce copyrighted mapping data to the OSM project. You will probably also want to set the By setting to “Foot”, the map view at the top to “Street”, and toggle on/off the Auto-Routing option when you encounter paths not on the map.
- I then downloaded it as a GPX file, using the link on the website in the Download panel.
- I uploaded the GPX file as a trace into the OpenStreetMap project’s website (you need to be logged in to do this) and marked it as a public trace. The resulting tracklog number was noted down.
- I went to OJW’s Static Maps website and set up the map, panning, zooming and resizing it as appropriate, entering the tracklog number, and adding a point to show the start/finish.
- I copied the resulting image URL onto my website. As it’s just an image, no fiddling around with Javascript is needed.
One caveat is that the trackpoints only appear where you pass junctions or other nodes on the OSM mapping data – the Static Maps process doesn’t join the dots.
An easier process is to use the OSM WordPress plugin – if you have it, and WordPress, and don’t mind having a dynamic map in your post:
[osm_map lat=”51.483″ long=”-0.163″ zoom=”14″ width=”420″ height=”500″ marker=”51.49,-0.151″ gpx_file=”/files/2009/10/542876.gpx” marker_name=”camping.png” type=”OS1″]
(N.B. I’ve hacked the plugin to pull in map images from the new OOC OSM server of historic Ordnance Survey maps.)