Going up in the world

There’s a new Strider out, with the next of my articles. I see there in the ‘Contents’ that I’m no longer listed under ‘News and Features’. I’m now under ‘Regulars’, so I must be doing something right!

Strider, Number 145, December 2019

To make the article legible, simply click on the photo. If that doesn’t work, here’s the text.

“So you’re a go-it-aloner planning your next long-distance walk. It’s to start here and end there, and, for whatever reasons, it’s to go through these particular parts of the country. That was easy, wasn’t it? Thinking of the idea always is. Now, however, you’ve got to develop that idea into a walk that you can realistically carry out given the constraints you have, for instance of time and money. That’s nowhere near as easy.

There are three questions you’ll find yourself asking again and again as you develop the idea – as you fit the possible paths together, as you set up the logistics, as you arrange the stops, and so on. The first is ‘Where do I go next?’; the second is ‘How do I best get there?’; the third is ‘What will it be like?’ The answers to the first two questions come obviously from maps and from tools such as Google Earth – I dealt with these in previous articles. The third question is different, completely, for it deals with what is commonly termed ‘ground truth’. You’re seeing some feature on a map or on Google Earth – or indeed on any type of remotely sensed image – and you’re asking yourself ‘What is that really like, on the ground?’

This question is critically important for go-it-aloners. Just think of some of the possibilities: a footbridge that’s marked on a map as passable but turns out to be gated, a river crossing that’s suicidal except at the lowest of flows, a hillside track that crosses some clearly unstable landslips, a winding country lane with high embankments and no footpaths. It’s certainly better to find out about things like these as your walk is being planned, rather than to stumble across them during the walk itself. Fortunately for the go-it-aloner there are well-established sources of ground truth. These don’t by any means provide ground truth everywhere, nor are they ever a substitute for being on the ground yourself; they are nevertheless better than nothing.

The conventional – dare I say old-fashioned? – approach to ground-truthing is to ask an expert. This can mean searching through guidebooks and walk reports for the area concerned, or it can mean contacting someone who’s actually been there. Using guidebooks and walk reports is a sensible strategy provided (a) that these are available for the area you want and are written in sufficient detail, (b) that they are up-to-date, and (c) that you can easily get hold of them. This strategy is unlikely to be successful if the walk you’re planning goes through areas that are not usually walked. The strategy of contacting someone who’s been in the area begs the questions ‘Who can that be, and how do I contact them?’ Firing off emails to people you think may be able to help may produce helpful answers; then again it may not. It’s worthwhile remembering that other people – even other go-it-aloners – have priorities too, and that these won’t necessarily include answering what seem to you to be thoroughly reasonable questions. But don’t give up! I think back fondly to the time when I was looking for a way around the broken-down bridge on Ca na Catanach. The obvious person to contact was the RSPB Ranger at Forsinard, who duly told me about the alternative. Thank you, Paul!

The more modern approach to ground-truthing involves searching on the web for geographically located photographs. There are specialist websites that help you do this, the best known probably being http://www.geograph.org.uk/. There are also geographically located photographs on mapping websites and on many walk-related blogs. What is impressive about the specialist websites – and this is what makes them the preferred source of ground truth for many go-it-aloners today – is the density of their photo coverage. Geograph, for instance, has an average inter-photo spacing of about 200 metres over the whole of Britain. It would seem, at least at first sight, that somewhere out there there must always be photos of the places you want to go and the paths you want to walk.

Of course there is a down side. Firstly, the only photos on websites such as Geograph are ones that people want to take; there tend therefore to be lots of photos of famous and/or visually attractive subjects. Secondly, there is excellent coverage on these websites only in areas that are well visited; the coverage in areas where fewer people go – and this may be exactly the sort of area that you’re planning to walk through – is often mediocre at best. Thirdly, the photos on these websites are indexed by the locations from which they were taken, not by the areas that the photos themselves show; it can therefore sometimes be remarkably difficult to get an adequate feeling for what the index location of a photo really is like. Fourthly, there is no guarantee that the given photo locations are correct, or that the given photo directions are correct, or that the photos are correctly captioned and dated. The rule when using websites such as these as ground truth for a walk has to be ‘be cautious’.

Finally, there is one special source of photographic ground truth that is invaluable in some circumstances – Street View. Street View is one of the controversial features of Google Earth, and in some countries – for instance here in Germany – its use is deemed to be a violation of personal privacy. There’s no such problem in Britain, however, which is fortunate for go-it-aloners who walk there, especially as Google appears to have sent its camera-cars down even the remotest country lanes. What do you get from Street View? Firstly – this is relevant wherever your route involves road walking – you get an idea of how pleasant or unpleasant that walking is liable to be – or how dangerous. Secondly, you get to look sideways from the roads: you get to see the adjacent countryside, to look down the paths and the entryways, to read the signs and the fingerposts. What don’t you get from Street View? Obviously you see nothing that isn’t visible from a road.”

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