The Ruhestein hill, used for skiing during the winter months
In the late morning hours the temperature in Karlsruhe was about 18°C. Usually the Ruhestein is about 6°C less, but surprisingly its webcam displayed 18° as well, so I immediately grabbed the bike and went to the station, heading towards Baiersbronn, Black Forest (about 500m).
Due to the rainy August, it’s fungi time. Here is yesterday’s catch. All pictures have been taken using the Nokia N900 mobile computer. The quality is not comparable to pictures taken with a dedicated camera, but frankly I’m quite impressed of what one can achieve with the N900. I hope you enjoy.
Caterpillars
Gudereit LCR Trekking Series bicyle
During the last four years my biking trips almost completely took place in the upper Rhine plane, occasionally touching the borders of the Vosges Mountains or the Palatinate Forest. I tried to avoid inclines, as my bike with an 8 gear Shimano hub was not the best companion for such trips.
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Landscape near Baiersbronn, Black Forest
The »Tour de Murg« is a biking trip from Freudenstadt, Black Forest, to Rastatt. It’s about 70km downhill – a great trip for lazy bikers like me :) . I did this trip four years ago including a lot of initial mapping. What surprised me most was the fact that lots of mapping details still are missing, are not up-to-date or are even totally wrong (see Gausbach).
Heavy Weather brewing near Wissembourg
Since it was obvious that I need a more reliable bike, I’m looking for the right device. A friend once sent me a PDF of a very attractive gadget. I also considered other options, but the more I was looking for alternatives, the more I wanted exactly this one.
Bergamont Satelite
Back in 2006, I bought a Bergamont Satelite 8 bike (about 600€), mainly to get to work. Shortly after that, I detected that biking is fun and bought a Garmin eTrex Venture Cx (about 300€), together with routable City Navigator Europe map data (about 200€). It just took a couple of days until I understood that the map material was made for car routing, not for outdoor activities. A lot of minor roads for biking were missing, and setting the device to do bike routing just did car routing, except that it omitted highway types like motorways. But heck, I wanted to know the shortest possible biking trail from my home to France.
Back Side of Rastatt Castle
Today’s trip led from Karlsruhe to Rastatt, an ancient german town with several baroque buildings. I decided not to make it a grand mapping trip, but to use openrouteservice.org to find the way. This means I expected not to find new ways because the route was calculated based on existing ones.
The way led through the woods and fields between the two towns. Many of the ways originally have been mapped by me several years ago and needed maintenance. Tracktypes for example didn’t exist in those days yet. Surprisingly I found some new ways anyway while others meanwhile have been paved.
Unfortunately my bike caused some trouble again. I’ve been at the shop three times, but they just don’t manage to get their stuff done. I’m already looking for another dealer and a new bike. I wanted to avoid spending the money, but today it broke my neck. It’s just no fun when your vehicle of choice doesn’t do its job.
Ottenhöfen, Black Forest
Around Ottenhöfen, a Black Forest town, some ancient watermills have been restored. A hiking trail connects all of them. Today’s weather was not that great, e.g. too cold for May, and it was a cloudy and windy day. We grabbed the occasion anyway, stuffed eleven people into two cars and entered the black forest, leaving the cars at Ottenhöfen station. Here’s one of the watermills:
Watermill near Ottenhöfen (wikimedia commons, Andreas Frick, public domain)
Meanwhile I know why I’ve been elected to book and drive a van of the local car sharing provider. Along the trail, a lot of fountains are sited, and some of them act as a very special selling point (called »Schnapsbrunnen«). The black forest aborigines place bottles of schnapps in the water, add some drinking glasses and an offertory box. Hikers just serve themselves and leave some money. Needless to say that some of us served themselves very well :) .
Of course I used the occasion for some mapping. Most tracks and ways already have been mapped, but not very well. I added some ways, details along them and fixed some broken crossings. I’ve also modelled the water mill trail for appearance in the hiking and bridle map, but it will take some time until it gets rendered.
Finally we had some coffee at a local restaurant, enjoying local cake. This is a typical black forest cherry cake (»Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte«):
Black Forest cherry cake (»Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte«)
A great trip, and it begun raining just as we returned to the cars. An excellent timing :) .
Lœwenstein Castle
As the weather is fine at the moment (and my bike is broken again), it is hiking time. Slowly it becomes difficult to find unmapped terrain, as openstreetmap.org meanwhile does not only attract car drivers but also hikers and (mountain) bikers. In the region where I grew up a lot of medieval castles can be found, and I visited them all. Time to resurrect the hobby of my youth as long there are still trails missing in the woods.
Jester (openclipart.org, by Johnny Automatic, public domain)
It’s not the first time it happened, but I was surprised anyway. I was hiking along the french-german border. I only ran Mæp and Waypointcatcher. I didn’t use osm2go to save some battery power. Even without Waypointcatcher not running, Mæp caused the device to crash four times. This usually happens when the device’s interface is locked, so you just notice that the device does not respond as soon as you try to unlock it. The only thing that helps is to remove the battery and boot anew. As data roaming is about 7¢ per 10KB of data (sic), I could not use AGPS. Thus the device needs up to twenty minutes to get a GPS fix after a reboot.
Unfortunately Mæp drops the recorded track after such a forced reboot. But hey, no prob, I have the WBT-201 running as a backup.
Anguis fragilis
This weekend was an excellent one, providing very good weather conditions to do some mapping by bike. The Bienwald, a huge area of wood where I still seem to be the (almost) only mapper who collects data, still serves me well to combine three hobbies of mine – nature, riding my bike and mapping for openstreetmap.org.
I really love the smell of the pines during warm days in spring. You can see all kinds of animals – including crane flies, though. The Bienwaldmühle, including a traditional german restaurant, serves great food. The rest in their biergarten took too long, so the way back home included twilight – which was a good thing, because you can see even more animals (like foxes, roe deers etc.) which usually are not seen during daylight.
I collected a lot of missing ways, names of ways and names of the wooden parcels. Though it is the third year I’m mapping there, still a lot of details are missing.
I used the WBT-201 as an autonomous logger to track the whole trip. The N900 did a good job, but I left it alone until I crossed the rhine to save some battery power. This is necessary as one of my two batteries only lasts for about three hours – though I switched the device to offline mode. The two batteries have been sufficient for the whole trip, but I now know I will need a third one for whole-day-trips.
Quelques Guis
Aujourd’hui j’ai éte en Alsace, pour cartographier quelques chemins au bord du Rhin.
The Heilbach meanders the Bienwald
I grabbed the occasion of today’s excellent weather conditions for my first mapping tour with the N900. I used it for my continued effort to map the Heilbach for openstreetmap:
I left all the other gadgets I used until now (mp3 player, Canon camera, external bluetooth GPSr, N810) at home and only grabbed the N900 to check if it really can replace the previously used armada. To anticipate the result: yes it can. I’m quite impressed and really content with the device. It’s a great digital companion. You should read on, though, to learn more about some pitfalls and shortcomings to avoid frustration.
Currently the »Horizont OUTDOOR« fair takes place at Messe Karlsruhe:
I’ll be at the OSM booth (which is 4.216, dm-arena, near the GPS-Village) tomorrow. Garmin maps on 2GB Micro-SD memory cards are available for sale at 10€ each (which basically is the cost of the hardware).
I hope I can share some photos tomorrow.
Frozen Tarn
Every now and then, a mapping trip is not as successful as intended. And so was today’s. Here’s some C code describing my feelings :) :
Some code
Hiking Trail in the Bienwald
As Daisy had even reached the Upper Rhine Plain, we had some snow for a couple of days. I used the occasion for three nice hiking trips in the Bienwald, mapping grade 4 and 5 tracks, hiking paths and, last but not least, the stream Heilbach and some drains alimenting it:
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In addition to some prior mapping of black forest ski runs, I’ve been on-site again last sunday. Meanwhile, Langläufer contacted me due to my mapping activities. I’ve now tagged the route relations according to the tags he currently renders. Here’s the result as seen on his map:
Cross-country ski runs near Herrenwies
The map is similar like Openpistemap or the Hiking and horseback riding map created by Nop. Some collaboration or mashups would be great.
Ottertal Fungi
Due to the annual Xmas family meeting I had the occasion to do some further mapping of the lovely Ottertal. Unfortunately my camera failed after I had taken four pictures, but that’s better than nothing :) .
Snow of the black forest near Herrenwies
The winter arrived in europe, and even in Karlsruhe with its mild clime some snowflakes and temperatures less than -10°C have been detected sporadically. Surprisingly there’s not much snow at the nearby black forest yet (only about 20cm respectively 8″), but it seems to be enough for winter sport activities.
