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Walks in Lancashire |
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Walks in Lancashire |
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
In the fourth and final article, Graham Hughes of Anquet Maps talks about how you can utilise Anquet after your walk to log notes, store photographs and share your routes with others.
For a quick overview of the Anquet Maps system, please view the video introduction on the home page of our website at www.anquet.com.
If you are like me, and enjoy the planning stage of a day out in the hills, then you will certainly also enjoy the after trip experience with Anquet. I usually find this review stage leaves me wanting for more, and gets me into the next planning stage.
If you have taken a GPS unit or Pocket Anquet out with you, then your first step must be to load your tracklog into the Anquet software on your PC. A tracklog is like the Hanzel and Gretel bread crumb trail, giving Anquet an electronic record of exactly where you have been.
Examining a tracklog can be fascinating. In Anquet you can display the tracklog at the same time as seeing your originally planned route. Comparing them, you can easily see where you differed to the planned route. Using Anquet's Sync Screens you compare these on both an Ordnance Survey map and on aerial photography at the same time. Using this technique, you will often find that where your tracklog differed from the planned route that the actual path on the ground as viewed on the aerial photography differs from that of the OS map!
In Anquet, you can easily read the time and date of when you started and ended your route by examining your tracklog. Using this information, you can see at which points in your trip you were moving quickly, slowly, or just stopped for lunch.
On returning from a walk, it's a great opportunity to fine tune Anquet to better help you in the future. To estimate your trip time, Anquet uses Naismiths formula which takes into account ascent, descent and distance. If the Anquet estimate is not very accurate for you, then you can alter the settings to get better estimates for future trips. You can also keep different profiles such as 'Walking', 'Cycling' and 'Walking with grandchildren'.
Within Anquet you can add text to any waypoint along your route. You can use this to store any information you may later find useful, such as navigational tips, or comments about the scenery. These notes can be especially useful to other users if you are intending to share your route.
You can link any file or folder on your PC to a waypoint within Anquet. Using this technique it's easy to link photos to waypoints to record your days out. If you wish to link multiple files to a waypoint, you can link a folder and use this to keep any documents of your choice. We find this later technique being used more by ornithologists for viewing notes, fisherman for catch logs and geography departments for all sorts of data capture from water flow rates to angles of scree slopes!
I would encourage you to visit our new route system at www.anquet.com - it's completely free! The system is based around user content, and at the time of writing the database contains over 1200 routes to choose from. Searching is easy, by just entering a place name. You can also filter results by distance and ascent to help you refine the search. Once you have selected a route, you can simply download it into Anquet and use it just as if you had plotted the route yourself.
You can also upload your routes to the Anquet route system to share with others, and it is through this method that our routes system keeps gaining popular and quality routes.
Anquet is free to try. You can download the software and sample maps from www.anquet.com with no obligation.
The majority of our maps are now purchased by download (prices start from £10), but we still produce CD products for those who would prefer the physical item.
Our sales team are available 9am-5pm Mon-Fri on 0800 033 7030 or sales@anquet.com.
Graham Hughes, Managing Director, Anquet Technology, October 2009.
