More interest

I met Gary and Kirsty today. They collected a 19 inch monitor that I offered on Freecycle. I sent them a link to the OSM map so they could find our house and they liked the site. They live in a part of Hull called Longhill, which we haven't yet added to the map and they seem interested to have a go. I hope they do.

Moving to the suburbs?

I've been at home for a few days not feeling well. The Olympics in Beijing have kept me occupied much of the time, but I have looked at the map of the area. I noticed a slip-road missing in Hull - there was a GPS track, but they are easy to miss when slip-roads are close to the trunk road.

I've also been thinking about the areas on Hull and looking at the way other cities are rendered. I have ignored the districts of the city, but they have names and deserve to be added. I realised that people use the tag place=suburb to label districts in a city. It looks good, but if I'm being picky a suburb is a district on the outskirts of a city, not a district within it. I think we need place=district for the areas in cities, not suburb. It is probably pedantic but I might bring it up on the OSM-talk list.

Speaking of being a pedant: John Humphreys [BBC Radio 4 presenter] once told me that someone had described him as a pendant.

Beverley is complete

We've finally completed the last part of Beverley. We left the main pedestrian area until the end and went on a Monday morning so it wasn't too busy. It was a matter of joining up a lots of roads that lead towards the pedestrian zone. There were more little alleys and footways than I expected. On Saturdays there is a market in, what the rest of the week, is a car park. We know the roads around it as Saturday Market. There was one small, old sign with that on and no others. Some of the banks had their address outside the premises and they all quoted Market Place, Beverley. No street signs showed Market Place. Also in Saturday Market is the oddly named Market cross which more like a band stand.

Name that road

The saga of Beverley continues and now the end is in sight. We finished the housing estates and squeezed through some of the older parts of the town, there is just the town centre shopping areas to complete. We came across something that seems fairly rare: two name boards for the same street that differ from each other.

The top sign is fixed high on a wall and is typical of some of the older signs in the area. The lower sign faces the first across the street and, although looking tired, it is the more modern name board. I chose the first board to name the road on our map, but I may be wrong. I think I'll email the council and see what they have to say.

More of Beverley

Beverley is taking much longer than I thought it would. We have been working (again) on the southern estates and have made a lot of progress. These new estates are rather pleasant places, with lots of little footpaths and cycleways, some leading to much older footpaths. We've also mapped out the area around the nearby supermarket. I haven't seen the render yet so I need to check it.

I had to remove a small piece of highway=residential that someone had added around a small car park. I sent him a message so he knows what's going on.

I also had a message asking for help from Stephen O'Neill in Withernsea. He has just started out and needed a bit of help with JOSM, which I've tried to give. He contacted me because he had altered a bit of road that I added and it all went a bit wrong, mostly because he had tagged nodes rather than the ways. He is keen to map his local area which is good for me. I want to complete the East Riding and Hull (if anywhere can ever be complete) and the further flung parts like the East Coast are a long way to travel, so if Stephen does some of that it will help.

I hope that with one more visit I can finish Beverley - but it will probably be at least two.

Would you buy a house ...

We had a short visit to the south of Beverley. I realised that where some of the fairly new houses have been built was once a wet land area. The council, who choose the street names, have hinted at this with a couple of the names: Marsh Drive and Figham Springs Way.

Hull milestone

We've made a couple of short trips into Hull and included some mapping of the city centre. The city is now mapped (fairly well) from the river Hull westwards. Some parts of the east of the city are also mapped so I guess that more than 50% of the city is complete. Much of what is left is the usual slog of housing estates. It's the side of the city we know least, so I look forward to surprises and discoveries.