Even more cycle routes

What a difference a day makes. We set out to explore some more of the National Cycle Network route 65. We set out west from Melton. After our last foray along the very badly signed route 1, I was not sure what we would find. To my great surprise the route was beautifully marked with not an ambiguity nor a problem at all on the section we followed to Broomfleet.

The signs looked quite new and that maybe points to the great improvement. Maybe the route signs were not so well placed for route 1, or maybe they have been removed.

The next section follows a track by the Humber which will be interesting, but not for a while yet.

More cycle routes

I went to the Sustrans website to look at the National Cycle Network map again, to find some more detail of the cycle routes close to home. The link to the maps had been taken off the site. I used the history list from my browser to go to the page, which was still there. The grind of using the Sustrans map wasn't any easier, but it showed an alternative route for NCN route 1 that leaves the Humber Bridge and heads north, eventually to Beverley, rather than the variation that head east into Hull. I went out to follow it and photograph the signs.

There was absolutely no evidence on the ground. The map even shows a bridal path in a substantially wrong place (an Easter Egg?) . I stuck at it and eventually I found a route 66 sign coming out of Hull heading towards Cottingham. I followed it towards Beverley and at a couple of points it has signs also showing route 1, as well as route 66. I followed the route through Beverley but it petered out in the north of Beverley. The odd thing is that route 66 is supposed to start in Beverley and head west to Manchester via Leeds, yet the signs show it starts south east of Beverley.

I will try to find more of routes 1, 65 and 66 another day, but I am disappointed with the Sustrans information. They have received millions of pounds of public money as well as other donations to promote, amongst other things, these cycle routes. The web site and the evidence on the ground are contradictory. If I bought a map from them it might make everything clear, but the web site and signage just puts me off.

Cycle routes

I noticed that a national cycle route passes right through our village. It is marked by a blue sign with a cycle on it and a white number in a red box. The sign is for route 65. I went onto the Sustrans website to check it out. The maps they provide are pants. They are deadly slow to respond, they are not slippy maps (you have to keep clicking a scroll button and the whole page refreshes) and they are out of date. They also give no written detail, so it took me a while to realise that there are alternative routes. Route 65 is from Hull to Middlesborough. Nearby there is also route 1 and route 66.

I guess they don't tell you too much on the web site because they want you to buy the route guide - this seems to a common ploy, especially with charities and maybe that's fair enough.

After a bit of poking around I worked out that one option of route 65 takes a path along the Humber bank from the Humber Bridge to North Ferriby. It then appears to go up Swanland Hill to Swanland, West Ella, KirkElla, Anlaby, Hessle and into Hull, which is perverse. But I got it wrong this is two alternative routes that meet at the crossroads in Ferriby by Medici's restaurant and then head west to Melton and beyond.

I followed the route from Hessle to Hull which it shares with route 1. Route 1 runs from Dover to Shetland up the east side of the country. It crosses the Humber Bridge which is why it appears in Hessle. I traced the routes into Hull as far as Ann Street where I lost them, so I'll try that again another day.

Now I just have to figure out how to add them to the map.

Boundaries and builders

Over the last week or so we have been plugging away at the areas that make up the boundary between Hull and East Yorkshire. Today we finished Anlaby Common, which makes a solid swath from the Humber to the edge of Cottingham. This boundary-following strategy helps define a target to work towards, which increases the satisfaction when they are done.

Once again we saw street after street lined with caravans that people were living in while builders repaired their homes after the floods last June. A few hours of torrential rain, nine months to repair and counting.

Easter Eggs

Over the past couple of weeks we have had little forays into Hull to add the streets and amenities to the map. My aim is to add streets, with their names, and such amenities as are obvious, especially churches, pubs, schools, petrol stations and any obvious landmark such as a large building. Any extras such as restaurants are added if we notice them. I've also been also been trying to add land areas, such as school fields, allotments, parks and sports pitches. All of this makes a much richer map.

Open Street Map is an open map. Anyone can add to it and anyone can use it free of charge, subject to a simple licence. Not so most other maps either on paper or t'interweb. The commercial maps are prone to being copied so the companies sometimes put extras or tweaks into their maps, so that if they are copied they can point to the extras and prove that it must have come from their map, because they don't exist anywhere else. This can be little stubs of roads, small names changes or other little things that don't really exist on the ground. Today I've found two (they could be simple mistakes). Spring Gardens have an old sign showing its name, A Famous Web Search Engine's mapping page shows it as Spring Gardens South, East and West. Similarly Plantation Drive has a two parallel(ish) roads which FWSE map shows Plantation Drive East and Plantation Drive West. To make it even stranger, the most easterly of the two roads is actually called Plantation Drive West (!?)

These little tweaks are important tools to maintain a company's intellectual property. So what are these subtle and small changes called? They're known, appropriately enough, as Easter Eggs - today is Easter Sunday.

Angel of the South

So, the southern end of the area of Hull known as Anlaby Park didn't throw up many surprises. There were more schools than you could shake a stick at, eleven storey blocks of flats standing in large green space and an Angel.

We drove down a cul-de-sac and near the end two women were chatting. As we approached, a cat wandered into the narrow road and sat down in front of us. One woman shooed it away and we passed to the end, turned round and headed past the women again. It reappeared and sat in the road again. This time the woman had to walk up to the cat and shoo it again, telling Angel how daft it was.

If she had not been there Angel might have joined his namesakes.

Industial end

The main road from Hull to the East is the A1033. It meanders its way to Withernsea, but at some point it changes from a trunk road to a primary road and I wanted to find that point. It was easy to find, it is the roundabout at the entrance to the huge industrial site at Salt End, just beyond the boundary of Hull and into the East Riding. At the same time I could confirm that the village of Salt End is obliterated under the BP chemical works. We added the detail of Paull village and Ryehill hamlet along with a few very rural little roads.

On the way home we noticed that the new roundabouts on the vastly improved Hedon road into Hull all have names, which I hadn't noticed before. They are now on the map.