Setting off, 5pm Friday

In this second article on my recent 3 Peaks challenge I describe the hikes themselves and the transits between the mountains. See Part One for a description of the challenge.

My personal times were:

So as you can see I did succeed and completed it – I got to the top of Snowdon in a shade over 23 hours. I was a little disappointed not to get down again within 24 hours, but as you will discover when you read the account of each mountain, I just count myself lucky to have even finished at all, irrespective of times.

Ben Nevis

A small handful of our party set off before 5pm as their personal targets were simply to complete all three climbs and not worry about the time factor. The rest of us set off at five on the dot as seen in the photo at the top – I’m in the green coat on the right of the picture. Yes, the short hairy legs are mine.

Given the amount of training I had done I was a little surprised that after only about 300 metres or so I was at the back of the column. Maybe it was down to being somewhat restricted in the leg-length department. Rather than going hare-arsing after everyone, however, I decided to continue at the pace I had been training at. Sure enough, after a mile where the slope really starts, I was starting to go past my colleagues who had set off so quickly. Early on I delayered too, which helped a lot as you really work up a sweat on the initial climb. By the time I had gone about 3 miles I think I was in the middle of the pack.

I’ve used Path Profiler in Google Maps to give a rough idea as to the slopes on the route walked. Note the distance reported is on the low side as I cut a lot of corners when tracing the route for the profiler. It would be useful if you could pick on a path already in a map rather than having to trace it out again. To make it readable you may have to click on the image.

Some of the guys were quite serious racing snakes. Ian – my brother in law -was planning on running all three peaks, and another three were speed walking up and hoping to jog down.

Originally I was thinking that I could be snapping photos all the time on the walk, but the pressure of racing against the clock, along with not wanting to concede a place in the order we got back to the cars, meant that it was really hard to justify turning the walk into a photography expedition. Even so, I did manage to grab a few pictures.

Looking back down Glen Nevis

Into the cloud

Looking up you can see some figures against the cloud that hung over the peak. I had decided to take my Canon SLR with me in a weatherproof bag (see Snowdon for more info), and so stopping, putting down walking sticks, unpacking the camera, and lining up a shot could take precious time. In hindsight I think I would have been better of with a small pocket camera like my Ixus.

Top of Ben Nevis

After about 3 or 4 miles, the rest of the way was in cloud and so the view was not that great. Eventually after 2hrs 50 mins I got to the top. Here you can see me with some of the guys who got there shortly after I did. It was pretty cold at the top. Apparently earlier on someone – not one of my crowd – had stripped off and danced naked around the top. Mad sod.

Just below the summit was some quite deep snow that you had to go through. I took this picture as I descended.

I think what Ben Nevis did illustrate is that even though you are walking in mid-summer, where the weather is nice and balmy at the bottom, conditions on the mountain can be very different and can change in just a few minutes. You really do need to walk with good kit. Hopefully if you get nice weather you won’t need it, but if you don’t it will save you a load of pain and discomfort.

Ben Nevis descent, 8-15pm

As I got below the snowline, the clouds cleared briefly just enough to see the sun glint off the loch and reveal the rocky ground that we were on. This was taken at 8-15pm.

Finally after another twenty minutes – about a mile – I got below the cloud base as you can see in this next picture.

Ben Nevis descent, just below the clouds

(Note: click on any of these images for a larger version).

By this time I was feeling pretty good. Not tired at all, in the middle of the pack and making good time. About half way down the track becomes quite smooth for a while so I decided to jog that bit. But after a couple of hundred yards I decided to just walk as normal, really thinking that I did not want to risk screwing myself up when I would not be really changing my finish order enough to leap into an earlier car. None of my training had involved running on the mountain, and now did not seem the right time to start!

On the lower part of the mountain there is quite a steep descent down stone steps. It was here that I first started to get twinges in my left knee. By the time I got to the bottom I was in a lot of pain most times I took a step. It slowed me down quite a lot. However, I just gritted my teeth and ignored it until I got to the bottom where took a couple of Ibuprofen, stuck a tubigrip bandage on it, and got myself sorted for the drive.

I had got down in time to be in the third car – the first two with the fast guys had already left. By the time we were ready to go it was gone 10-30pm. This half hour turnaround was really quite slow, and was mainly due to sorting out hot food. It must have seemed a long wait for the first of the guys in my car who had got down at least 20 minutes earlier than I.

Drive to Scafell Pike

On pulling out of the car park at Ben Nevis we discovered a slight problem. Our driver Paul had forgotten the lesson learned only 10 hours before about filling up with fuel when you get the chance, and we only had a partial tank of fuel. The trip computer was saying we had enough for around a hundred miles or so. By this time, there were no garages open in Fort William, and it was touch and go whether it would get us to Glasgow.

So we had to hope the garages marked on Paul’s TomTom Satnav between us and Glasgow would be open at the dead of night. In the meantime, he drove with economy in mind. For us poor passengers it meant no aircon, or any other non-essential gadget. The drive immediately south of Fort William was spooky – the local deer graze right up to the edge of the road and all you see is a glimpse of antler in the headlights as you zoom by. There was a real risk of a collision with these animals.

We passed a garage identified on TomTom, but it was closed. As we got to the Glasgow turn, we were further dismayed to see the road was closed overnight for maintainance. So now we needed to divert via Stirling. At this point Paul certainly started to earn his Prius Eco-Badge, as he made use of every drop of fuel and every slight hill to squeeze every mile we could out of a now dangerously low tank. If we ran out here – in the middle of Scotland at gone midnight – our challenge would be over.

Finally, with the car running on fumes and prayers, we coasted into a service station on the outskirts of Stirling. Phew!

The rest of the drive to Wastwater at the base of Scafell was uneventful after that, and us five walkers managed to get at least a little sleep even if it was fitful. I was sitting in the middle at the back which did allow me to stretch my leg a bit an ease the pain. I was, however, starting to get worried. We arrived at about 4-15am.

Wastwater, base of Scafell

Scafell Pike

We managed to get going in pretty quick time. Just 15 minutes to get parked, changed, watered up, and on our way. Looking up the trail you could make out the torches of a few other walkers who were already going before sunrise.

Here is the path profile for Scafell. See notes on the Ben Nevis one above for more information.

By the time I was half way up I was in real trouble. Despite walking with care and my sticks, every step was agony to my left knee – it felt like swollen ligaments or tendons, rather than muscle pain.  Three of the guys in my car had zoomed on ahead, with a fourth going slowly just ahead of me but gradually pulling away. By this time I was seriously thinking that I may have to give up.

Luckily about this time I spotted our club doctor, Adam, coming back down. Thankfully he was one of the racing snakes in the first car who had got there about an hour before us. I asked if he had anything to ease the pain and, after a series of questions grilling me on my medical history, he pulled out some pills from his bag and issued some dire warnings about how long to leave it before a second dosage. I swallowed the pills, and carried on up. After just a few minutes the edge had come off the pain, and if I took extra care on my foot position on each step the pain was more bearable. I was still moving a bit slowly, but at least I was going.

Myself and team mates at top of Scafell Pike

My fellow passengers were pleasantly surprised to see me at the top – they had only been there a few minutes. I thought I would be a long way behind, but the steep climb of Scafell is a great leveler of pace, I guess. I think that also my fitness may have paid off as, despite the pain of walking, I never felt the need to stop and rest. Score one for my training regime!

The rocky summit of Scafell Pike around 6am.

Anyway, time for a quick photo or two, and then back down. This one was looking from the top towards the recently risen Sun.

I took extra care on the way down as I was mindul that is when the knees can really start to go. Part way down IanD – the first of the guys from the next car behind us – came pounding up the hill and looked to be a man on a mission. I carried on down, the pain getting better and my pace gradually increasing. By this time the first three from my car were out of sight, with the fourth gradually easing ahead of me. About half a mile or so to go I looked behind me to see IanD really going for it on his way back down. He’s a lanky sod, and the length of his legs was a real advantage to him as he caught me up. As he passed me all I could think was “Bastard! That’s my place in the third car gone….”.

Not too long after, I surprised the rest of my car by striding back to base – the drugs had kicked in big time by now. I was fully expecting to have to wait around now for the rest of car four to get down the hill as IanD had passed both me and one other from car three on his mad descent. Much to my surprise, however, he declined swapping cars as the fourth vehicle was our big BA Baracas ‘A-Team’ van and he could stretch out in the back to sleep. Fantastic, I thought.

Little was IanD to know that his decision meant that his attempt on the Three Peaks Challenge was at an end.

Transit from Scafell to Snowdon

We had a pretty quick turnaround at the bottom of Scafell – I was determined to get a shift-on before IanD changed his mind! As we left, Paul our driver made a great decision that probably affected whether any of us would make it up Snowdon in 24 hours. Rather than follow the organiser’s route out of the Lake District that, on the map, looked the shortest, he simply followed the Satnav that took us out a longer way, but on better roads.

The route most of the other cars followed was to go out through Wrynose Pass. While fantastically beautiful, it is on very steep and narrow roads and the ‘A-Team’ van, in particular, later had real trouble negotiating it. The route we followed was the same as the one I used the previous week when I went up Scafell as a practice run, and dropped out through Wasdale, down to Ulpha, and picked up the A595 that eventually gets you back on the M6 near Woodhouse. Definitely the best route.

We had a straightforward trip, although with hitting the road about 9am we started to get the weekend traffic.  As we got near Wales, the weather turned pretty wet, and the outlook was it would get worse. After about four and a half hours we turned into the car park of Pen-y-Pass at around 1-30pm. We knew that the chances of getting up and back by 5pm were pretty much gone, but we should be able to meet the Challenge target of getting to the top within 24 hours.

Mount Snowdon

As we got ready to go, the rain was not too bad. The next photo shows me just changed and within a minute or so from setting off. For the first time on this challenge I put by waterproof trousers on – boy did I need them!

Raring to go up Snowdon

The five of us headed off at 1-45pm. My knee by now was slowing me down a bit from my normal pace, and after about ten minutes myself and another of the guys, George, who was really starting to suffer with his knees decided to go at our own speed and let the other three go ahead.

Our route was the Miner’s track. This starts off flat for a few miles, continues up a reasonable bit of slope, and then hits a very steep climb of over 400 meters elevation. Here is the path profile for Scafell. See notes on the Ben Nevis one above for more information.

Soon after clearing the car park the rain and wind really started in anger. George’s water proof cover for his rucksack was continually blown off, and I was thankful for having good quality outer layers and a hood that kept my thermal hat on.

The point on the Miners Track where you turn a corner onto the last lake to look up at the start of the 500m steep climb was a real decision point. Winds by this time were gusting over 50mph (as we later found out), and rain was continuous. Light was starting to go.  We both decided to just go for it – I was not too worried about getting up, but the descent later in ever worsening conditions was real concern for me as we started the climb.

Partway up we met a couple of the guys from the second car, who warned us that things were getting bad. They later confessed that after seeing the pair of us they were certain we would not make it to the top. Further up the wind was getting stronger. At one point as I was mid-step across a gap a large gust of wind caught me off balance and I was knocked over. Bit of a brown trouser moment, but I was unhurt and after that a bit more careful. The same thing was to happen a couple more times while on the way back down.

On Snowdon ridge. It's a bit wet.

The rubbish conditions mean that my camera was kept in its bag – I was genuinely fearful that even the bag I had would not be sufficient to keep the water out, given the driving rain. Finally, as we got to the main ridge, I decided that I simply had to take a photo and was relieved that it was bone dry. Here’s where the steep part of the climb ends and you start to walk the final ten minutes or so up the ridge to the summit.

I quickly stuffed the camera back into its bag. A couple of minutes later the others from the third car passed us on their way down.  At this point George and I realised that we had not been passed by all the guys from car one. We later found out that they had got a bit lost on the descent due to bad weather and missed where the Miners’s Track splits and so had instead returned via the Pig Track.

George and I trudged on. Finally, at 4-10pm – 23 hours and 10 minutes since the challenge had started – we both reached the top of Snowdon. To mark the occasion, I risked my SLR once more for George to take a photo of me. Things were so bad the autofocus simply could not lock on on. As you can see, I’m still smiling though! This was not a great day to see panoramic vistas across Wales from the country’s highest peak…

There were only a couple other people at the top, which contrasted greatly with the numbers we had seen at the tops of the previous two mountains. After a very short rest, we headed back down again.

If things were bad on the way up, they were simply crap on the way down. Now the time pressure was off, our priority was simply to get down without injury. By now the wind was gusting upto 80mph (according to the BBC later), and the cloud had descended almost to the lake at the base of the steep part of the track. We saw hardly anyone now, and had to be careful with our navigation as you could not rely on seeing where others had gone. The track was mostly unrecognisable from the ascent as more and more streams and little waterfalls transformed the surroundings.

Completion of the steep descent from the ridge to the lake was when we could start to relax. Our knees no longer were so stressed, and the danger of slipping on rocks on a steep slope passed. From here we just plodded along the much flatter part of the track. It seemed to go on forever. With about half a mile to go we saw in the distance  our driver who had set out to try and find us. The rest of the guys in the car had got down a long time ago and they were concerned for our safety, particularly as hardly any other walkers were coming off the mountain by now. Paul decided he was going to walk for a mile or so up the track, and then call for help if there was no sign. Luckily, that was not needed after all. He informed us that the fourth and fifth cars had decided not to even attempt Snowdon because of the atrocious conditions combined with the lateness of the day. This was definitely a wise decision – going up and down again as night fell would not be fun, and for largely inexperienced walkers likely to be dangerous too. See part three for more on the decisions made back at Scafell that contributed to the abandonment of their attempt.

At long last the three of us returned to the car park at 7-30pm. Two of us were wet through, tired, aching, but chuffed to hell we had managed it. After a change into dry clothes, we drove off to the Holiday Inn in Wrexham to meet up for a few well-earned beers with the rest of the team.

Post-challenge refreshments

It’s all over

Well, I did it. Whether anyone reads this far or not, who knows! Hopefully you’ve found it interesting. It was one of the toughest things I’ve done for a long time. But good preparation, training and kit improved my chances and kept me injury free. The super-strength pain killers I was prescribed on the way up Scafell almost certainly made the difference between success and painful failure. While not making my knee normal, sufficient edge was taken off what was agony so that I could carry on.

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Something that caught my eye on the Digital Urban blog was a reference to a fantastic little website applet that shows Flickr slideshows with a difference. Called Flickrvision, it shows a near-realtime view of images being uploaded to the Flickr online album website, overlaid on a map of the world. You can overlay the pictures either on a normal 2D Googlemap or, as the screenshot here shows, onto a 3D view of the Earth which spins around to help position the images.

Flickrvision in 3D mode

You can go straight to the 3D version by clicking this link. There’s no need to install anything – just click & go. To switch to the Googlemap version, just press the “Classic View” button that appears on the screen. It is a great page to just leave open on your desktop, especially if like me you have a two screen set-up.

A game you could play would be to upload photos to Flickr and watch to see if they appear on the globe. Have your favourite screen grabber tool at the ready…

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A quick follow up on the post a couple of months ago about my quest to find a simple way of embedding Google Maps in WordPress blogs. Just to recap, the main issue I had was finding a way of embedding custom maps.

While I still have yet to find a solution to self-hosted WordPress blogs like this one, there is a good solution for anyone who has a blog hosted at WordPress.com. For those of you that don’t know, this is a site that looks after thousands of WordPress blogs for free. They run their own specific version of WordPress – you can’t get at the PHP code or install your own plugins. But it’s a great way to host sites at little or no cost. I run a couple of community sites hosted there, both for the Round Table organisation – see Long Eaton Round Table and also the Area 14 sites.

That version of WordPress provides a tag – “googlemap” – that can take any Google Map reference including custom maps and embed them in the page properly. It works really well – for an example, see the About page on my Area 14 site. Instructions for using the tags can be found here.

Now all we need is the same thing on the regular version of WordPress, and I’ll be a happy bloke.

Just a quick note to describe some recent changes to this site.

I’ve changed the template from the attractive but not easily configurable “Feather” theme to Chris Pearson’s “Cutline 3 column” one. The initial advantage of this was it was easy to set up my own header images to be my own photos rather than someone else’s. All the headers are my own.

While it was nice to have each individual page type (posts, archives, pages, about etc) have their own header image, Chris posted a simple mod to the header PHP file that randomly selects an image from a set. Every time you visit the site or refresh a page you’ll get a different header. I intend updating the image set as often as I can. If you read further down this post I have described the header images currently in use.

But there have been more changes than this.

I have also updated to the latest 2.5.1 version of WordPress – I was at 2.2 previously. The update was easy to do, so kudos to the authors of the program to make it idiot proof.

The cool new feature of 2.5.1 that I could use was widgets – the bits you see on the side panels. While they did exist in 2.2, they are much better and easier to set up with the newer version. I may have gone a bit widget mad, though. Here’s what you can currently see:

• Flickr sidebar – I’m turning into a massive fan of Flickr, and this widget lets me show an image selection.
• PicLens Slideshow – The Piclens plugin is worthy of a whole post of its own. It is simply a stunningly good plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox that provides a fantastic way of browsing image libraries. The dynamic mini-slideshow adds a nice touch to any blog, and by default just cycles through all the images in the blog. It should let you point it at a Flickr feed too, but I can’t get this working. There’s a support query in with the authors, but nothing back yet. Once this is fixed, though, then I can get rid of the Flickr sidebar.
• Site Vistor Cluster maps – not actually a dedicated widget, but rather simply a bit of HTML in a generic text widget. This shows a map of where in the world people are who have been reading this blog. See the Cluster Map homepage for more information. It’s really easy to set up.

The plugins I have currently installed are:

• Akismet comment anti-spam – I wish I had this earlier. The most popular post on this blog is the one about streamlining your PC for games, but it keeps getting spammed. Since installing Akismet, however, I’ve not had to deal with idiotic comments advertising various unsavoury products.
• Flickr Photo Gallery – provides a neat link between images on Flickr and blog posts.
• Google Maps for WordPress – already described in an earlier post.
• WP Piclens – Provides a direct link to the Piclens image browser from any picture on the blog

Header Images – updated 24th May 2008

Here is the current set of header images along with descriptions of where they are from. Click on any of them to see bigger versions in Flickr – or just keep hitting different pages in this site until they get randomly selected:

	No prizes for guessing! A scan of a photo taken in 2003 while on holiday in Australia.
	Harbour of Roscoff in Brittany, France. Taken in 2007.
	Photo-stitch of 4 images taken from the top of Mount Stinson in New Hampshire, USA in 2004.
	Ribblesdale viaduct in the Yorkshire Peaks.
	View from a walk in Yorksire Peaks near Ribblesdale viaduct, on the way down from Whernside.
	View of, I think, rapeseed field. Taken near Darley Abbey in Notts.
	Photo-stich of four images, taken from Mount Major in New Hampshire.
	Pebbles on a beach in Sidmouth, Devon.
	Canal Lock, converted to black & white as a post process.
	Darling Harbour, Sidney Australia.

All these images are also geo-tagged in Flickr, so if you do click on them to see in Flickr you can access a map of the exact location they were taken. This is a neat example of the integration of online albums, blogs, and mapping – all for free!

To fit nicely with the Cutline theme, these images have to be long and thin at 970×140 pixels. Luckily this is easy to do in Photoshop – just set the custom crop size to 970×140, and interactively select the area wanted. The challenge is in finding sections of images of this aspect ratio that are good and/or interesting in some way. I make no claims to being successful in either of these aims for all of the images. But, as mentioned earlier, I will periodically update the image set.

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I have been creating my own Google maps a lot recently, largely in support of an upcoming attempt at the 3 Peaks 24 hour challenge – hiking up the three highest mountains in the UK all in 24 hours. I’ve got various maps for the three hiking trails, plus a few put together to help plan training walks.

I’ve been scratching around for a while experimenting with various ways of sharing these maps, and embedding within a WordPress blog seems a good thing to do.

For blogs that you host yourself and can upload new plugins too, there is Inline Google Maps, which gives results like this:

And lets see!

Oh….the damned thing doesn’t work…..Back to the drawing board….

Here’s an attempt with Google Maps for WordPress :

This works really nicely – lots of control over the map, and you get immediate navigation. And it just worked. But the problem with this is that apparently I can only use place names for the map. What I really want to do is to embed my own custom maps. For example, this one for the 3 Peaks challenge.

I’ve left a query with the author of the plugin, but in the meantime it’s back to the drawing board again for GM plugins.

Update (23rd May): The author – Aaron Campbell – said in this comment saying that at present he has no plans to update the plugin to take user specified maps. This is a great shame – customised Google maps are incredibly useful, and being able to embed these in a posting would be great. So, maybe I’ll write my own plugin. It’s only software – how hard can it be?   Don’t hold your breath though, I’m a busy chap…

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A few weeks ago I wrote about using Panoramio to publish and view images from around the world in Google Earth and Google Maps. At the time I posted just a single beach scene from Hamilton Island in Australia as a test image and noted that it takes a while for these images to appear to any user of Google Earth. At long last these have now appeared!

After I wrote the article I added a few more images I had lying around. After a few weeks, they started being flagged by the Panoramio reviewers as having been accepted by Google Earth.

However, when I looked at Google Earth I found that not all of the pictures were there. But a quick look at Google Maps showed that they were all present for anyone on the web to look at:

There appears to be a lag of around a couple of weeks between the image being flagged in Panoramio as being accepted and it appearing to other users of Google Earth despite it appearing in Google Maps much sooner. While I still really like Panoramio and will continue to add photos to it, I must admit to being frustrated by the long wait between submission and publishing of images. For my beach image it was a period of nearly two months, which I think will put a lot of people off.

Despite this there is a bit of a thrill in seeing your own photos in Google Earth. I’ve taken a screen shot to show the images as they appear from the Panoramio link. Since I can only see one side of the globe only a few images are visible – I’ve ringed them in red. Although looking at the image again, perhaps I should have drawn a nose somewhere mid-Atlantic and a smile somewhere near Ascension Island!

One improvement I would like to see is an optional email notification when an image has been accepted, and again when it is available in the various online applications.

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Something I came across recently was the ability to share your own photos of places around the globe using Google Earth. A Spanish company called Panoramio have created a very easy way of selecting locations on the globe and adding your own pictures. Other users of Google Earth can then see these photos by clicking on the camera symbols that get overlaid onto the map.

At first sight Panoramio looks just like yet another website that hosts online galleries. You can store upto 2Gb of pictures for free. Other users of the site can browse your pictures. But the big difference here is that you can do this by clicking on a Google Map window, and have the images appear to other people via Google Earth. A two way link between an image browser list and the map window means selecting an image in either window will select it in the other so you can see in a very dynamic way where pictures were taken. It is much easier to try than describe – go to the Panoramio Map and have a play.

And then the really smart thing is link into 3D with Google Earth. Read on…

When you upload a photo to Panoramia you get the option of picking the place in the world where it was taken. This will not instantly appear to other web users – the company has an approval process that takes around a month, which I guess is to insure against unsuitable content and just plain wrong locations.

While awaiting approval, however, you can still see the images on your own local Google Earth, and also send the links to other users. For example, the following image shows one of mine:

This is a screenshot from Google Earth that shows a small thumbnail of a beach shot I took when in Australia a few years ago. It is just a test image I uploaded to Panoramia.

Note that if you zoom in using Google Earth, then all the small blue balls change to the camera symbols mentioned earlier and shown in the next image:

Finally, if you click on either the thumbnail or one of the camera symbols you will get a Panoramia window popping up that shows a bigger version of the image along with a few other options.

In my case, clicking on the beach scene shows a much larger version of the image wrapped in the Panoramia pop window. You can see this below.

At the moment I have only put this single file on Panoramio. I want to look through some of the pictures I’ve taken over the years and put them on the map. I think the standard tourist places have been done to death, so I’ll look to find some locations that either do not have many existing images, or that are significantly different from the ones already posted. If you want to keep up with my images, then look at my Panoramia page, or just search for user “gwhitfield”.

It is worth mentioning that even if you never intend to post any of your own photos the site is worth a browse – there are some simply stunning images. Looking at pictures of places you are familiar provides some interesting perspectives, not to mention a little envy at how good other people are with their cameras! For any keen photographer or happy snapper, the Panoramia stuff is well worth a browse. But for the best experience do it via Google Earth as described earlier.

Panoramia was recently acquired by Google so expect to see much more innovation coming out.

In my dreams….

What I would really like to see is a link up between Panoramia and the geolocation feature in Adobe Photoshop Elements 5. For those not familiar with Elements, it provides a way you can tag the location photos were taken. But it uses flat Yahoo Maps, and there is no uploading involved – it is all local to your PC which makes sharing difficult. What would be great is the ability to upload and link directly to Google Earth via Panoramia.

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As a follow up to my previous post about using Google Maps in conjunction with your own GPS data, you can also do the same thing in Google Earth. Something I missed before was that the same GPSVisualizer site provides the service so that you upload your GPS file, and it generates a Google KMZ file for you. Click on it, and the file gets downloaded and launched in Google Earth directly. Very neat and very easy. Here’s a screenshot:

The purple line is the overlayed GPS track. As you can see from the loop at the right edge, I had to turn around – the road was closed by flooding.

A difference between this approach in Google Earth to that of Google Maps is it is easier to share the information in the latter. People don’t need anything other than a web browser, and you do not need to send them a data file.

I did see somewhere a GPS track overlay in Google Earth that rendered it as 3D – the height of the track related to speed. If I can find it and make it work, I’ll post back here.

Now, all I need is to find a way in GE that I can measure the length of a GPS track and I’ll be extremely happy. It would be great to go for a walk, bike ride, or a drive; plugin your GPS data, and calculate how far exactly you had been and see data such as elapsed time between points. Then do this a number of times with different routes and you will get a very intuitive way of analysing best routes over a period of time.

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I’ve been dabbling with Google Maps recently as I want to download some GPS data from my PDA to visualise and analyse journeys that I have made. I also think Google Maps and its 3D sibling Google Earth are the absolute dogs doodads of applications and so any excuse to play with these was welcome.

I started with a .GPS file that was generated automatically by Copilot, which is the in-car satellite navigation software that I use. It’s pretty good, but like all Satnav systems you need to be aware of its foibles to get the best out of it. Never, ever, simply follow the instructions!

The GPS track was a record of my travels on Monday 25th June as I tried to get into work in Sheffield as it was getting hit by freak floods. Getting in was OK(ish), but took a long time. Getting home again was a bit more interesting as I kept trying to avoid all the bad traffic.

Anyway, since I was being forced to turn around and try new routes to avoid flooded roads, jams etc, I wanted to see on my PC where I had been. What I did not know was a quick and easy way to do it.

Copilot has a PC hosted planning application, but that won’t take the GPS tracks that the PDA version generates (sigh….). Ideally I wanted to put the tracks into Google Earth to look at in glorious 3D, but I currently only have the free version that does not allow GPS tracks to be imported.

A quick webhunt brought up GPS Visualizer. This provides a free service that allows me to upload the GPS file, and it generates a Google Map with a vector overlay of the results. Even better, the site contains instructions on hosting the resulting map on your own website.

So I had a go at this. The HTML pathway was a huge faff, to be honest, as I was rather foolishly trying to use Frontpage. The problem was that it was trying to be too smart on the Cut and Paste operation, which screwed HTML tags over. In the end, a quick path was to:

1. View GPS Visualizer page source
2. Save source to local HTML file on disk
3. Open HTML with an editor. Even Frontpage could manage this bit!
4. Locate the Google API key, and replace it with my own (see below).
5. Set page titles, modify the default 600×600 window
6. Upload to my website

The resulting page can be seen here.

If you want to do this yourself you’ll need a Google API key, which you can get from here