I've a few squares not yet visited (with legal access for bikes) within a few Km of our house however I don't think I'll take the road bike for this one:

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1138942

I've a few squares not yet visited (with legal access for bikes) within a few Km of our house however I don't think I'll take the road bike for this one:

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1138942

That was 2009 Bob, it might be lovely smooth tarmac these days

Bearbonesnorm wrote:

I've a few squares not yet visited (with legal access for bikes) within a few Km of our house however I don't think I'll take the road bike for this one:

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1138942

That was 2009 Bob, it might be lovely smooth tarmac these days

I wondered what they'd been doing with the tarmac - not been using it to fill in the pot holes

You could float down that on the fat bike!

I think I'm right in saying that you can hit a tile anyway you like. Strava has activities for skiing, swimming, walking etc, so as long as you have a Strava record of being in that tile you get it

benp1 wrote:You could float down that on the fat bike!

I think I'm right in saying that you can hit a tile anyway you like. Strava has activities for skiing, swimming, walking etc, so as long as you have a Strava record of being in that tile you get it

It does, but you can also filter them in VV to get explorer scores for each separate type of activity. I've been in every square on the Isle of Wight on my bike but not yet managed to get them all whilst running, so still got work to do there.

Edit: Having checked my VV I've got the largest square I can when on the bike but there are some missing but it would not increase my NxN score, so still places to explore by bike as well.

£10 later, I have found out that I have 761 tiles, average of 6.570 km per tile, Max square 7x7.....

And this thing below ....

Next time you're down you can come adventuring with me. :)

Should be on commission here

This is my current map. Really nice to be able to see where you've been, and therefore new bits to explore

(not tried the file upload function before, pic seems quite small)

You can also view the leaderboard for the Bearbones strava group.

Blackhound is killing it on the explorer tiles and max square front!

Give me time, I'll stomp his face in!

At some point I'm going to join up my South Wales exploration with my Mid Wales exploration, and it'll be a beast.

Here's the main bit of my current Explorer map.



All the squares are bike routes with very little cheeky stuff.

A lot of the holes to the west and north east are moorland with very little access. South and south east are the major conurbations around the M62.

My biggest problem is that everything south of me is water.

benp1 wrote: 1- Do I need to have strava premium to be able to do the route planning in strava?

As others have said, no. And a feature that will make make Strava route planning a lot more interesting than using Google maps is their Global Heatmap:

hover over the red cross in the top right and "Create a Route"



then click on the cog on the left:



the turn on the Global Heatmap switch



The map will then show all the ridden routes coloured in from light blue to maroon, depending on how often they've been ridden. I use this loads now - it's really handy for off-road bits in unfamiliar areas where you're not sure what is and isn't rideable.

Looks like you only need that one square to get a large square Bob?

Comforting to know you'll have to do the same amount of Death March as me, to get the tiles between Hebden, Colne & Keighley

Chew wrote:Looks like you only need that one square to get a large square Bob?

Comforting to know you'll have to do the same amount of Death March as me, to get the tiles between Hebden, Colne & Keighley

There's two actually: one by the intersection of the blue squares which only has the A65 running through it and one on the east side which has no bridleways through it though there is a footpath along the lane. I have ridden the A65 one but it was just before I started using Strava

The ones east of Colne on Ickornshore Moor aren't too bad to do as there are paths and tracks, it's just that I've not done them on Strava, but those between Widdop and the long causeway are just bog fests Ah well ...

benp1: Bearbones strava group? Is that Strava or FB?

So does Strava work for off road now? It used to just snap to whatever it knew was a road / route / segment. Was utterly awful for trying to do anything adventurous on.

Bob, your map is impressive. Having spent a week up there with the family, and seen some of the scenery, that moorland can be quite bleak!

This is the Strava group - https://www.strava.com/clubs/23204?hl=en-GB - mostly folks from here with a couple of randoms

One of the very clever things about the max square is doing a big loop or long ride doesn't help you, you need to cover every tile in that loop/ride too.

I had a play around with the chrome extension for Strava yesterday. Actually it was ok, better than I thought actually. Being able to see the veloviewer tiles worked and the shading was a touch easier to see for me, particularly when I tip the laptop screen forward/backward.

Didn't plan a route on it, but you could use manual to do the off road bit. Not sure if you can flick between the manual/normal like on bikehike for road/offroad

benp1 wrote:Not sure if you can flick between the manual/normal like on bikehike for road/offroad

Yes you can.
The off-road route mapping is reasonable if there's a track marked on the map. For local stuff it's easier than bikehike, especially if you want to share. Although it will try and follow the most popular/easy route which is invariably the road.

Well, went out for a ride, applied rule #5 and rode that bit of the A65 to get the missing square plus rode through three other "blanks on the map". My Explorer score is now 11x11 - and I've got 11 of them Annoyingly even though I was on the cross bike I missed a couple of lanes that if I'd ridden along for a hundred metres or so I'd have got another couple of squares and be on 12x12, oh well.

Nice Bob. That 'if only' situation is why I'd like a map of the tiles to be able to check

That's why I do my routes beforehand. Zero chance of missing anything unless you find that it's a private road with a gate or something.

Edit - Just tried the Strava route builder. It's improved a hell of a lot since the old days.

You know... this would be a hell of a lot easier if I lived somewhere flat.

I really must pay attention to the elevation map on my routes.

Have now taken to making my next exploration route immediately after doing the last exploration ride.

Update Veloviewer, load up Strava with the addon, go at it. Made two rides today, MTB and road. :)

How's your max square looking?