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• #1052
Bit from column a, some from column b. Kinda sucks starting riding again when it's cold and wet (I should be used to it now) and I'm also getting trains out because I can't be arsed riding for 2hrs in shitting suburbia to get to lanes/tiles. Old me would never have got a train to/from rides but new me has very little tolerance for London riding now.
Arm held up fine. Neck is a bit sore still. I'm seeing two physios and getting conflicting advice for it. Always good fun.
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• #1053
That to me reads: "dear hippy, please come in, we'd love for you to watch our balls"
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• #1054
The other problem with mine is it's all little bitty pieces everywhere. Clearly done a lot of riding out of London but never thought to join any of it up. So each section takes a lot of "cleaning". Maybe I should try and hit 50x50 by the year's end. That'd be nice goal. Depends how much time it takes to get the 400k/600k done.
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• #1055
Night time is your fried for golf courses
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• #1056
Best to leave it until I get round to actually playing there
It's funny to imagine playing golf there and thinking "I need to push this drive into the rough on the right to get a square"
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• #1057
I think it would be more "Oh shit, the pressure is on, I need to hit this down the middle of the fairway in order to get a square. Don't go right. Don't go right. Don't go right ... Shit."
(cf: Target fixation...)
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• #1058
Best to leave it until I get round to actually playing there
It's funny to imagine playing golf there and thinking "I need to push this drive into the rough on the right to get a square"
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• #1059
Night time is your fried for golf courses
Indeed, although getting to the Golf Course at night requires a reasonable walk through some pitch black woodland. A headtorch might make it a bit too obvious once I'm on the course.
I'll take a much less serious approach to some tiles in Richmond Park GC as I can just do that in daylight. I plan on getting some missing tiles by walking from Chohole Gate up along the path next to Beverley Brook then just after the bridge (near the Roehampton Gate car park) there's a gate into the golf course, climb that gate and walk back through the golf course along the road that cuts through it, feigning ignorance if questioned.
The other trick I've found is to claim that you've been sent back this way (the way you want to go) rather than saying that's the direction you want to go. Less likely to be turned round and refused further progress.
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• #1060
claim that you've been sent back this way
Very cunning - I will remember that one
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• #1061
Right, I've been talking with the dev and have narrowed down the preview/view issue. It looks like RWGPS have changed the way they show routes when they're Private.
If my route is Private but I'm logged in, Squadrats don't appear when I view the route. If I change the same route to Public, the Squadrats immediately appear.
This didn't use to be the case. I guess there's some change and Squadrats might need to pass RWGPS the privacy_code param to get it working.
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• #1062
MiniGB has to go to Guildford for a sports thing for 2 hours this weekend and that just happens to be exactly where I need to ride to extend my large tile square. A 35km ride will get me the tiles I need to go from 18x18 to 21x21.
In the mean time I've been picking off some local small tiles. Yardinho up 400 in the last couple of weeks. Wimbledon Common is done (barring some private bits of Royal Wimbledon GC) and I'll hopefully get Richmond Park covered by the end of next week with some lunchtime walks. Can get my small tile square up to 32x32 before those RWGC tiles become a problem:
- West is limited by The Roehampton Club, but I've got some tiles in Richmond Park GC to get first
- The RWGC tiles to the South mean I need to shift the square 4 tiles to the East to continue, next blocker in that direction is Beddington
- North is limited by the ungettable tiles in the Barnes Wetland Centre (shifting 4 tiles East fixes this)
- East is pretty much unlimited for now, I think it becomes a problem with the river West of the O2
As cycling fitness returns I'm hoping to start extending my big tile yard with longer rides. Plan is ride parallel to existing rides to maximise coverage. Should be able to extend my yard all the way up to Cambridge with one or two well planned routes.
- West is limited by The Roehampton Club, but I've got some tiles in Richmond Park GC to get first
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• #1063
I got 306 big / 2723 small from this weekend's 400k.
@Greenbank 32x32 for the little square is good. I can't expand mine, locally at least, without doing some naughty things. I guess at some point it'll just jump location away from Ealing
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• #1064
32x32 for the little square is good
Not there yet, need a couple more rides to pick off the necessary tiles. Focusing efforts elsewhere on closing harder to do things (internals of Richmond Park for example).
Doing a lunchtime 60-90 minute ride (or ride/walk/ride) is perfect for this. It's going to be a good few months before I've got everything I get feasibly get within a lunchtime excursion. Really enjoying the planning and actually getting out there parts of this.
Recent plotting had me see that Buckingham Palace presents a problem for extending Northwards. I guess Jonathan France
- a) managed to go on a tour of the Palace/gardens
- b) be invited to a garden party
- c) got them via some GPS jitter
...
as there are two tiles that are wholly within the grounds that I can't see any way to get with public access. - a) managed to go on a tour of the Palace/gardens
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• #1065
I am missing those same two tiles. As a loyal... republican... I am astounded to have no been invited.
Added 370 squares and upped my yard by almost 140 completing my SR for this year in the nick of time.
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• #1066
as there are two tiles that are wholly within the grounds that I can't see any way to get with public access
They are open between late July and September. Guided tour is fifty quid.
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• #1067
They are open between late July and September.
OK.
Guided tour is fifty quid.
Meh. The yard(inho) is where it is at.
I'm not going to stump up ~£18 for a trip round the Wetland Centre to get the 6 tiles (but not all 9) I'm missing there, so £50 for the Royal Family - one can do one.
(I will pay £50 a time to be a golf-wanker to get some of tiles in Dukes Meadows and Richmond Park Golf Clubs though. At least I get some comedy shit golf with a mate of mine.)
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• #1068
You might be able to have a self-guided garden visit for only 20 quid. Also in the summer.
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• #1069
You can get in anywhere with a good disguise.
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• #1070
Small tile square up to 29x29 with a few lunchtime jaunts.
Got one more ride needed to get it to 31x31 and then I'll switch to focusing on the yardinho as I start to be hampered by some ungettable tiles. Currently a yardinho of 2177 but I can easily add 30-50 at a time with a lunchtime ride. I still have some small tiles under 3 miles away that I haven't got yet.
A few weeks/months of extending the yardino and that should make my small tile square extendable again as it will push the square away from the ungettable tiles in the East/South (Wimbledon Common GC, Barnes Wetland Centre, Roehampton Club, etc).
Also still have some big tiles close to me. SE London has just been a no-go since I've had a GPS. Closest is only 5.5 miles away (Streatham!) but the plan with the big tiles is to ride parallel rides to existing routes to boost the yard that way. A single ride up to Cambridge using a slightly different route would extend my yard all the way up there.
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• #1071
Up 2000 in the rankings by extending my little squares to 12x12 today. It has involved a wee bit of tactical trespassing into schools/fields, but it now covers pretty much the whole of Tonbridge. Most of the ones round the edges now involve challenges with private land/non-cyclable roads/railway sidings, so not sure how much bigger that square can get.
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• #1072
Knowing what I do of Tonbridge, that's a decent size.
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• #1073
Finally got that tile at the top of Kex Gill, taking my square up to 37x37. Think it's going to be pretty hard expanding much further north or south at the west as my square is butting up against the Pennines in both the Peak District & the Dales, with big hills & private estates on both. Going east is pretty boring flat riding too.
99.9% of the squares I've got are from riding from my front door so quite chuffed with that. There's been plenty of somewhat boring commuting miles in getting to distant tiles though.
Edit: fun fact, my tile is 2.7% of the size of England.
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• #1074
Knowing what I do of Tonbridge, that's a decent size.
It's unfortunate that I've pretty much done it now, as there's not too much scope for extending it with dark winter night runs - lots of trespass-y fence-clambering required. Still, only joined Strava recently, so huge amount of scope to extend the big squares past the current 9x9 - didn't even have Toy's Hill till yesterday!
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• #1075
I am getting drawn in to tile bagging ... after 15 years living near the peaks, half on the east and half on the west, I have got a fair amount of the middle of the Peak District National Park done without tilebagging (via a mix of road, MTB and running) and am hoping to finish it with some planned tilebagging outings in 2025 - which should hopefully grow the max square too.
Tracking this with Veloviewer and the Strava plugin ... Does Squadrats add more than just the small tiles?
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The key is their signage is on the permissive side:
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