Walking with Google Maps

Why I am doing this

I walk a lot, around 30,000 steps a day at the moment, and I use maps several times a day so I thought that it was about time that I documented my experience, good and bad, of using my most common tool, Google Maps.

The last time that I wrote about maps was in 2009 and things have improved since then.

I have also been asked by the local Ramblers group to say something about editing maps and so I will cover that in this longer piece.

Planning a walk is easy

This is probably the best thing about Google Maps and the reason that I use it the most.

Like most mapping systems that I have (but not the free OS one) it can draw a walking route between two points. For my main weekly walk, with a friend when permitted, we think of a part of Greater London that we want to explore and let Google Maps do the rest.

In this case we fancied going to Hampstead Heath and chose two endpoints that are on direct train routes from Richmond, we can get to Embankment on the District Line and back from Hampstead Heath on the Overground.

Google draws the most direct walking route between the two. Sadly the distance is given in miles (this can be changed but you have to do it every time) and the walking speed is a little slow but it is a useful start for planning.

As drawn, this route is too short and too ugly, in particularly it avoids the two large parks in the area.

And this is where Google Maps comes up trumps, you can simply select a point on the route and drag it as required. 

You can do this multiple times to add all the places and routes that you want to include in the walk.

I do not play around too much, the aim is just to get a better guide and the decisions on where to actually walk will be taken on the day according to the prettiness of the landscape and the condition of the paths.

By adding a loop in Hyde Park and a route through Regents Park our planned walk increased to a more meaty 14 km with scope to increase it further on the day.

A (small) library of walks

Having created a route on Google Maps it is possible to save and share it. There is no point in doing this for our ad hoc routes but, luckily, other people have done it for established routes like London's Capital Ring.

This map is not on the Capital Ring page and I found it through a simple Google Search, on the optimistic assumption that someone would have mapped it, and they had. The map is here.

Unfortunately the use of Google Maps is inconsistent among walkers with many other technologies also being used, most of which lack the familiarity and near ubiquity of Google Maps.

Keeping track on the walk

The big advantage of using a mapping app on your phone, as opposed to a static guide, picture or pdf, is that you get a little blue dot showing where you are on the route or, as often happens to us, if you drift off the route it is easy to see how to get back on it without necessarily having to retrace your steps.

I have done walks using the "turn left in 150m" type instructions and having got lost it has been quite an effort to work out where the mistake could have been made and/or what could be done to correct it.

Adding missing paths

Google Maps is pretty good at including paths, it is better than Apple Maps but not as good as Open Street Maps (I use the Pokemon Go interface continuously while walking) but there are times when things are missing and this can be frustrating.

These errors, in my experience, are usually small in size but significant in impact. Here, for example, Google does not know about the two (!) paths from the end of Mead Road to Lock Road and so takes you all around the block. Having been slightly derogatory about Apple Maps earlier it is worth saying that they do know about these paths.

Similarly, until recently Google Maps did not know that you could walk through Sheaf Gate or Sandy Lane Gate to get into Bushy Park, despite the rather obvious clue in their names.

The reason that Google knows those paths now is because I told it.

Within Google Maps it is a simple matter to "Report a data problem" but I find the approval process a bit hit and miss. I had to try adding a new unnamed path through Sheaf Gate a couple of times before it was accepted.

One error that really annoyed me, a long path stopping pointlessly just 2m short of another so that they were not connected, took me several attempts to get changed, this despite the fact that a lack of any obstacle was very clear from the satellite view in Google Maps. 

Likewise I do not know why they would not accept that Sheaf Gate is a gate the first time despite this being clear in their Street View as well as in its name.

It is a question of being precise in describing the error and patient in pushing the amendments through.

Common problems with maps

Google Maps suffers from some problems that are common to all mapping apps that I have tried:

• There is no indication of gradient so the steep climbs to places like Dawson Heights can be something of a shock, outside of the centre London is quite hilly!
• What is shown as a path can vary from tarmac to unwalkable mud.
• Some green spaces are things like centenaries or golf courses and while these may have paths across them they may be gated and locked. 
• Similarly places like Bushy Park have fenced off sections that are not shown on the map. The counter problem to this is that it does not recognise that you can walk almost anywhere in places like Regents Park, because it is just grass, and are not restricted to the formal paths.

None of these problems are catastrophic but they all lead to adjustments on the fly when I am out walking.

In summary

Google Maps is excellent for planning routes and for tracking progress on the day but data quality issues mean that you have to be flexible and, for example, use other tools as well or change plans slightly as you go. And where you find data errors it is worth trying to get them fixed for everyone's benefit.