Fame at last!
The BBC (after a couple of radio broadcasts on our work) have decided to risk their cameras on one of our Mountain Bike rides in the New Forest!
Thankfully the new map has an overlay of all the permissive cycle ways in the Forest so we should be able to keep to the straight and narrow.
Your first sight of this video will be on our stand (OU 634) at the Outdoors show at London’s Excel centre 17th to 20th January.
My greatest fear is that they want to close with scene at the SplashMaps head office! Currently it looks like an exploded version of our exhibition stand!
Staying on the straight an narrow. The New Forest is unusual in that there are very restricted off-road cycle ways. We’ve captured these for our map.
I can confirm that the head office currently IS the exploded version of the stand. Printing a high resolution map on a 2.3 by 2 meter panel is just not what we have been doing for the past 15 or so years, which typically involved cramming web versions of maps on ever smaller devices. It almost has the air of an act of liberation to grant the map the freedom of appearing in a whole instead of confining them to a tiny little rectangular screen. At one point these were somewhat rightfully called “windows” but nowadays one can’t even go down the rabbit hole through them, they are just too small.
I will enjoy helping out at the exhibition. These things are a hell of a lot of work and quite expensive for a start up (and for anyone). It’s wonderful all the work consultation and wizardry you have put in Arnulf – and the rest of the team – to make this first very pleasing and simple to use map a reality. I’ve used it for walking and despite being far from an orienteer I found my way around well. The contours were clear and the only difficulty is the fact that the New Forest is not going to give you too many reminders of where you are in terms of well-marked footpaths. Thanks to the map you can select even unmarked paths and know you’ll be all right before nightfall. Though no batteries are needed, I should have brought a torch with me as I was out on the shortest day! If you’re on your bike you’ll have a light though. See you soon, I hope! Tchuss. John