OutdoorActive

Apart from a handful of walks and a couple of camping trips, I’ve hardly left the Wirral peninsula since early 2020, but, to quote Half Man Half Biscuit, “Everything I want is here, and everything I need is here”. I’ve become content with walks on the Oblong of Dreams.

Although still remaining on the peninsula for this walk, I was venturing across the border in to Cheshire. It is less than 15 minutes drive from my house to the starting point from where I’d planned a 12 ish mile route from the Hadlow Road car park further in to Cheshire, towards Burton.

It was a walk of firsts;
* I was finally getting to try out the Scarpa Crux approach shoes I got at Christmas. Lack of annual leave and several storms meant little opportunity to get them out of their box.
* Now that ViewRanger had finally been turned off, it was time to see what Outdoor Active could do.
* I was covering a number of new footpaths for me on this route.

I’d already planned the route on my laptop using the Outdoor Active website. It was easy to do and the ‘snap to’ function worked reasonably well for most of the walk, however, when I picked a path it didn’t recognise, I was sent on a long detour.
An easy fix is to click on the magnet button on the bottom tool bar (see image on left)
After setting this to be ‘route’ and not just a ‘plan’, it appeared on the phone app and I was ready to go (a plan being an initial ‘rough sketch’ of the walk) .

After getting the car in the last parking spot, I changed in to the Scarpas.
I’d owned the Scarpa Epic shoes previously. They had lasted well but were not as grippy as other footwear I’ve owned.
The Crux were so comfy as soon as I put them on. They share a similar design to the Epic. The Epic shoes are very blue with bright yellow bits. whereas the Crux are a more subtle dark grey with sky blue trim and laces.
Sorry, ‘shark and blue radiance.’
The ‘Vibram Megagrip’ sole design was slightly different too and, I soon discovered, worked well in the slippery muddy conditions.

I fired up the walking route on my phone and clicked ‘Start’. The tracking started automatically. So far so good, although I still had the OS Map app running in the background, a paper map in my sack and tracking running on my watch, just in case.

I started down the easy to follow Wirral Way, past Leahurst Veterinary School then took a left on to Cuckoo Lane. The route briefly took me to the side of a housing estate before passing a playground on the path down to the Dee Marshes.

Once at the marshes, the path became slightly busier. It was a Friday morning in February so I expect it could get very busy on a summer weekend. I was soon turning off though, taking Station Road up to Burton, a lovely village filled with thatched cottages, an old church and woodland area. It gets a mention in the Doomsday book and apparently, back in the day was a rest stop on the journey between Birkenhead and London.

The Outdoor Active app was also behaving itself. On previous tests it would often display a black screen with no information on it. No such problems today. The tracking was accurate and the OS mapping clear. Maybe it was finally winning me over! *

Looking at the map, I’d noticed “Burton Point”, the site of an Iron Age fort. While I was here, it made sense to go and check it out. There were paths just off the road out of Burton.
Entering the woods near Puddington Lane, I passed a ‘Welcome to the RSPB Reserve’ sign and continued on through to the car park.
From there I headed towards a building. Three people were sat outside.
“Hello” calls one, “Are you just here for a wander round?”
I was, and was charged £6 to do so.
I was rather taken aback, I was literally passing through and hadn’t noticed any other signs mentioning an entry fee, although it is mentioned on their website.

Everyone else here had binoculars, large camera lenses, tripoded monoculars or a combination of all three. They’d stop dead in the middle of the path and turn their gaze to a dot in the sky.
Three men were discussing a particular ‘spot’,
“I saw it first!”,
“Yes, but I identified it”.
I felt like an away fan in the home end.

The views over to Wales were lovely although there’s little to see of the fort now. I noticed another footpath out of the reserve but that was padlocked. I may have climbed over if it wasn’t for the older couple sat next to it. So, I turned and went back the way I came.

To be fair, if you go to look for wildlife it is worth the entrance but I wouldn’t recommend it for the walk to the fort. **
I retraced my steps to the village but took Mudhouse Lane to the A540. After crossing, it was footpaths right the way through to the Wirral Way and back to the car.

This route is available to download from Outdoor Active as a GPX file

*The love of Outdoor Active was short lived. The following week I took another walk. The route vanished three times and the tracking only recorded 5 of the 12 miles

** Sadly, shortly after I started to write this post the area was ravaged by fire causing concerns for the wildlife. The reserve probably needs all the support it can get – go visit!

I’ve been using ViewRanger for many many years with the Great Britain 1:25,000 OS maps. These maps are around 7 years old now but, on the whole, paths haven’t changed too much and the app is usually used with a paper ‘real’ map. It’s been a reliable app for planning or recording routes and very handy for those ‘oh heck where am I?’ moments.

So, how do you use ViewRanger?
Firstly, you need to set up a free account on their website https://www.viewranger.com/ This account will enable you to download routes, upload your tracks and, if you wish, share your adventures with others.
In a nutshell, a route is something you plan, a track is what you actually do.
Next, download the app to your mobile device. I’ve used it on a number of Android devices and it’s worked well on all. It’s currently running on a Poco X3 which recently replaced a Samsung Galaxy S8. Your phone will need a compass, gyro and accelerometer to use the SkyLine feature (more about that in a bit!)

There’s a number of free maps available. The Open Street and Open Cycle maps are decent and I’ve used them around much of Europe.
I have a CD containing the OS maps for the whole of Great Britain. These are my most used maps and are the same quality as the paper equivalent. The standard of paid maps varies between countries. I have purchased a number of Slovenian maps and I’ve not been too impressed, other country’s maps are of a similar quality to OS.

Since becoming part of OutdoorActive, ViewRanger themselves have stopped selling maps, instead redirecting users to the OutdoorActive website. I’ve not yet purchased a map from the OA site but I’ve been able to use the maps I purchased with VR(as we’ll now refer to them!) .

The VR app is still available to download at the time of writing (July 2021) on the Google Playstore https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.augmentra.viewranger.android but they are pointing potential users to Outdooractive, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.outdooractive.Outdooractive

As with VR, you need to set up an account on the OA website, but, if you already have an account with VR, the two accounts can be merged in to one.

So, in an attempt to get used to using OA, I decided to run the two applications side by side.

First, create a route.
Both allow route creation within the phone app but it’s far easier on their websites.
ViewRanger – Log in to the VR site, go to Maps and start clicking! Once the route is complete, save it then use sync feature on the phone app.
The planning is rather a vague, roughly draw a line between two points and then the next points and so on. You can tweak points to they more closely match where the actual footpath runs.
OutdoorActive – Adding a track in OA is also simple but it snaps the route to actual paths. Most of the time this works well and if far more accurate than VR, however, on a few occasions, it claims it can’t find the route and instead, takes you on a huge detour. A way around this problem is to snap lots of points close together to force it along the route you want. Again, this needs to by synced to your phone via the button on the bottom of ‘My Page’
At the moment, routes created in VR are also available to you in OA.

So, routes successfully loaded on to the phone

Recording a track
I like the VR interface, it’s very intuitive to use. When you want to start a track, just press the big green +. In OA, first, navigate to the correct screen, click on ‘Tracking’ then ‘Start’.

Skyline
Both apps have Skyline, a great feature for naming the hills and places in view.
Again, it’s easier to fire this up in VR, click on the icon on the bottom left.
OA is a little less obvious but, once started, it does give more options as to what you you can view.

Following a route
Following a route on VR has always been reliable but OA displayed just a black screen with the blue ‘you are here’ blob on a number of occasions. The route and map returned after restarting the app, but, this does become a bit of a pain when you went to quickly check you’re on track.

Both apps show where you are and the direction you are heading. I prefer the long red direction arrow used in VR but perhaps some may find that a little over the top. OA has a more discrete arrow on the blue current location blob.

In Conclusion
Although OA is a good app, albeit with a few bugs, I still much prefer VR. Perhaps that’s mainly due to familiarity. VR still have a very active Social Media presence so I can’t see it going away anytime soon.
And when it does go…… well, maybe I’ll see what OS have to offer.

Black Pudding Gaiters

Hiking, travelling, gear

Tag

New boots, new app, new route.

ViewRanger is dead? Long live Outdooractive?