Home > Expeditions > Route planning
Route planning
For the most part, these instructions assume that the route you are about to plan will be in the New Forest.
| Download New Forest Silver Campsites | Download New Forest Bronze Campsites | |
| Download New Forest Silver Campsites (csv) | Download New Forest Bronze Campsites (csv) |
Housekeeping
Click on Download the relevant New Forest Campsites (above). Choose Save and save the file to your DofE folder.
Navigate to the folder and double click on the file. Memory-map will open, displaying the whole country
Incompatible versions: Try to use the ordinary file first
(the file extension is .mmo). If double clicking on the file turns out
to give you an error message then proceed as follows:
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Navigate to Maps > Map list > New Forest and double click on that. The New Forest Map will open, with the (Silver) wild country campsites shown as yellow circular blobs or the the (Bronze) private-but-not-wild sites shown as yellow crosses.
If you are doing Silver, you will only actually use two of the blobs, but do not delete any of the others until much later in the process when I confirm that the Forestry Commission has accepted your booking.
You will find that if you now close Memory-map and re-open it, it will come up in that state, and that it will subsequently automatically save anything that you do in the way of route design when you close it down. If at any stage you want to send me a view of where you've got to, navigate to Overlay > Export visible . . Save to your DofE folder with a distinctive name, including the name of your group (Bronze1, Silver59, or whatever) and the date, and then email the file so saved to me.
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You need to understand that what you see on
the screen consists of two layers. The background is the map/aerial
photo that you have selected. You cannot edit this or add to it in any
way. Superimposed on the map is a so-called overlay, which
contains all the information you have supplied - routes, tracks, points,
text, etc, etc. Left to itself the default overlay gets progressively
more and more cluttered, and everything that is there at the end of a
session reappears at the beginning of the next session.
This carry-over effect is highly unusual in a piece of software. When you start a new session of Word, for example, you get a blank sheet and if you want to work on an old file you have explicitly to load it in first, and you have to remember to save it before you log off. The MM approach of having clutter accumulate can be a bore, as it's very time-consuming getting rid of it later. What I do is this:
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Starting out
To move the map around, position the hand somewhere away from any of your markings, hold the left button down, and drive the mouse around.
To establish a route, press the Route icon (12th from the left), left click somewhere on the map, slide the mouse somewhere else and double left click. That establishes a blue line with a blob at either end.
Re-position a blob by holding the mouse over it, holding down the left button and sliding to the new position.
Insert a new blob by right clicking somewhere on the line and selecting Insert waypoint. When you release the mouse you will be able to move the new blob to your chosen location before clicking again to fix it.
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Splitting routes: Right click on the route and select
Operations > Convert to track. Then right click on the point at which
you wish to make the split (it must be a place where there is a
waypoint, even though you can't see the waypoints at this stage) and
select Operations > Split track. Then convert both parts back to routes
- you'll probably want to move one of the two overlapping waypoints at
the split point slightly to one side. Joining routes: Make sure that the two ends to be joined are quite close to each other. Right click on each route in turn and select Operations > Convert to track. Right click on one of the tracks and select Operations > Join tracks. Then convert back to routes. Note that converting a route to a track destroys any labels that you may have given to the waypoints, so you need to do all the splitting and joining before choosing your checkpoints. |
Your route
You must start and finish at a car park and you must have two of the yellow sites at roughly the one-third and two-third positions (Silver) or the yellow cross roughly at the half-way position (Bronze).
Your route should be about 80-100 km long (Gold), 48-60 km long (Silver) or 24-30 km long (Bronze). To discover how it is getting on, right click on the route and select Properties. Or just hover over the route, and one of those little yellow panels will shimmer into view and tell you the length. The best thing is to plan the route very roughly to the point of selecting your campsites. Then set up separate rough routes for each day and delete the 'whole' route before beginning to fill in the detail. (Or use the more advanced splitting technique outlined in the green-bordered box above.)
Try to let your route be determined by your project.
Place the waypoints just to the side of the various tracks, so that the tracks are still visible. You will want to stand a chance of seeing the tracks if you do a fly-through (right click on the route > 3D flythrough) with the aerial photo switched on (use the + and - scale buttons, just to the right of the zoom buttons).
Your route should avoid roads and towns/villages as far as possible. In the New Forest, to cross the A31, you must use the underpasses. To cross other roads you should use subways if conveniently available. It's worth passing through a car park fairly early in the day if it has a loo. It may well have a litter bin too! Be alert to anything blue. Avoid bogs (tufts of blue grass) and look out for good places to cross rivers or streams (Fords or FB [=footbridge]). Stick to footpaths as far as possible. Be aware that black lines might be no more than low earth banks; or they might be not-to-be-crossed fences or stone walls. Don't fall into the trap of supposing that county boundaries are footpaths, or that green rights of way are necessarily accompanied by a navigable footpath on the ground! The 3-D flythrough will be a big help in confirming the viability of your choices. Bear in mind that you have to tow the water barrels between your camp site and a convenient bit of road - so think about how far away the roads are.
At this point you should submit the route for checking. Don't proceed to a more detailed and wiggly version until we have agreed the outline.
Processing the route
Before you begin, you will have to download three files by right clicking on the links below.
Open the Routecard_processor spreadsheet, ready for future use.
These instructions assume that you have a separate route on your Map for each day. See the box outlined in green above for advice on splitting routes.
You need to select certain of your waypoints to be check points. These should normally be between 1 and 2 km apart, and should be at highly distinctive map features, chosen so that you will be quite certain when you reach them, and which will serve to confirm that you are still on the right route. Number them (mentally) 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
Double click each of the chosen waypoints, and a properties dialogue will appear. Check the 'Show name' box (absolutely essential, and people tend to overlook this instruction) and then replace the WP99999 (or whatever) in the 'Name' box with your chosen name for that point (a series of consecutive numbers with no words is best). You will find that, when you look back at the map, each of your check points has acquired the label you have given it. While you are about it, make sure that the section of route leaving any particular check point is parallel to the track that you will take as you leave that checkpoint. This will assume importance later.
Next, double click on the route itself and, in the dialogue that appears, click on 'Settings....' next to the 'Route card' button. Check 'Only include labelled points in route card'. Click on the .... button on the Template line, navigate to your DofE folder, and double click on WinColl_Routecard_Template, and then close this dialogue. The system will remember these settings and you will never need to do this again (unless I change the template).
Back to the map. (You will need to copy and paste these instructions into a non-html window so that you can read them at the same time as doing other things). Right click on the route and select Operations > Route Card. The system will calculate a rudimentary Route Card which should appear as an html window in Explorer. Highlight everything in the table except the top and bottom rows. Copy with Ctrl_C, and drop into the Routecard_processor, placing the cursor in cell A2 before pressing Ctrl-V. You should find that the original data from the html table has gone into the cells below the red bar, and that an edited version of it has appeared in the cells to the right. (Note that you can't do this if you are using Firefox. You will have to save the route card as an html file, navigate to the relevant folder, right click on the icon and select 'Open with ...', choosing Explorer. Then proceed as described here.)
Open the Blank_route card spreadsheet and click on the relevant Day tab at the bottom.
Highlight columns K to Q of the Route card processor from the top row of the day's data as far down as the bottom of the data for that day, press Ctrl-C, go to Blank rout ecard, and drop the data into cell A7, using Paste Special > Values.
Repeat all of this for each day's route.
At this stage you might like to email the product to me. And save it with a distinctive name in a secure place!
We usually start the first day about 11:00 for Silver and Bronze. On subsequent days (and on the first day at Gold), you decide. You have to enter the start time in the format hh:mm. You decide when to have lunch, and put 00:30 in the Rest column for it. You also need about 00:10 minutes rest in every hour.
You enter camp not earlier than 6 (Bronze), 7 (Silver) or 8 (Gold) hours after starting. The walking only takes about n-2 of your hours. Rests and lunch will take about an hour. So you have an hour to spend on gathering data of various sorts for your project. You should decide in advance on which legs you are likely to be able to do that and programme some project time in. The time goes in the relevant time column and a summary of what you will do in the relevant column at the right hand side. If the total time is still under the target, then you can play with the minutes per 100 m, 10 m, etc figures at the top right hand corner of the spreadsheet. 1.25 represents 5 km/h (too fast with a pack), 1.5 represents 4 km/h and 2 represents 3 km/h (many groups use this, but you'd find it very slow if you don't get lost).
You chose your checkpoints to be distinctive spots, so now write a phrase to describe each one in the Description of point being walked to column: e.g. "Junction of track and forest boundary". Some assessors like the name of the spot if it's visible on the map, so it might save time later if you include it now.
Memory map calculates the bearings as if you were a crow flying directly from one checkpoint to the next. This isn't actually very useful, so you want to add in the actual bearing you will take as you leave the checkpoint. You have to be quite clear-headed about this. Suppose you are dealing with leg 3, which is about walking TO point 3. So you will be setting off from point 2. Hover the cursor above the segment of route leading away from point 2 until the little yellow rectangle shimmers into existence. It will have in it the bearing you are after, so enter it just before MM's bearing for point 3, without a degree sign, but with a / to separate the two numbers.
You have to think next about what to do if you get irretrievably lost or the weather closes in or you have injury, etc. For each leg, you need to identify an 'escape route'. You need to identify the most accessible place of habitation (from which you can obtain help) while you are on that leg. This will probably be on a road, so you may need to say something like "Go East to the B2345 and then turn right to Bridcombe Farm". Be careful not to direct yourself to walk over a cliff!
The last thing is to run your finger slowly along the route for each leg and enter a brief description of the various features you expect to encounter, and which you will tick off on your mental list as you pass by them. Be especially wary of tracks that end at roads or streams: they often turn out to be cul-de-sacs. Bear in mind that green dotted lines indicate rights of way and NOT footpaths. They may be totally impassable in practice. You want to be on black dotted lines. green dotted lines often have black dotted lines associated with them: you need to look pretty carefully. Don't confuse a county boundary (also a black dotted line, but slightly more widely spaced) with a footpath
Please enter the names and mobiles of the members of your team in the box at the top of the page. One name + mobile in each cell. Change X9 at the bottom right of each page to your team code, and fill in the Aim box just below it. Fill in the day number and the date at the top right of each page. It's most unlikely that you will need to edit the sheet number away from its default of 1.
PLEASE SAVE AS AN XLS FILE !! If you save as an xlsx file, you will destroy quite a bit of the formatting, and the calculations might not work.