An Introduction to the Walks
For details of the walks and maps showing the routes please visit the Walkers' Blog.
Use the Search Bar, on this page or in the Walkers' Blog, to find walks in any particular location.
Use the Search Bar, on this page or in the Walkers' Blog, to find walks in any particular location.
Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire Walks
Where are these walks?
Since 2004 I have recorded over 350 routes that I have walked together with a small group of friends. We have walked as far west as Askerswell and Punknowle and as far east as Fawley. Our most southerly point has been Portland Bill and we have gone as far north as Salisbury. It is now becoming quite difficult, if not impossible, to find suitable walks which don't include at least some paths that we have covered before.
A little while ago I decided that the best way of sharing these on this web site was to include them on a blog. I have included, in the blog, the walks that I have been on since the beginning of 2013. The search facility provides a way of finding walks in any chosen location.
Since 2004 I have recorded over 350 routes that I have walked together with a small group of friends. We have walked as far west as Askerswell and Punknowle and as far east as Fawley. Our most southerly point has been Portland Bill and we have gone as far north as Salisbury. It is now becoming quite difficult, if not impossible, to find suitable walks which don't include at least some paths that we have covered before.
A little while ago I decided that the best way of sharing these on this web site was to include them on a blog. I have included, in the blog, the walks that I have been on since the beginning of 2013. The search facility provides a way of finding walks in any chosen location.
A few more details about our Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire Walks
How far have we walked?
On my computer I have tracks for over 350 routes that we have followed on our Wednesday walks. The word "followed" is generally fairly accurate but on some occasions we may have deviated a little from the plan. The longest walk turned out to be 12.2 miles which was slightly more than intended and a few recent walks have been around 5 to 7 miles. The majority are probably around 8 to 10 miles and the distances are shown in the blog. I would have to admit that now we are all over 70 - some more than others - the distance has been reduced to 6 to 8 miles for most of the walks. So we have probably covered well over 3000 miles. We have also visited quite a number of fine English Public Houses.
There were four of us walking on a more or less regular basis. That is to say some are more regular than others owing to the fact that some folk like to take lengthy holidays and others, sometimes the same ones, suffer from the usual round of problems as muscles, joints and other important bodily parts decide they need a rest! Well let's be fair. We can't expect to all remain honed athletes when we've got bus passes. Very sadly Rob died in November 2016 and now just the three of us are left. Some memories of Rob can be found in the Walkers Blog November 2016.
Where have we been?
We have walked as far west as Askerswell and Punknowle and as far east as Fawley. Our most southerly point has been Portland Bill and we have gone as far north as Salisbury. It is now becoming quite difficult, if not impossible, to find suitable walks which don't include at least some paths that we have covered before.
Following the routes.
Most of the routes are very easy to follow and armed with a 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey map no further explanations are really needed. In some cases where the paths may not be so obvious I have added a bit more text.
A few points for the technically minded.
The walks were originally recorded using a Garmin eTrex Vista GPS and downloading them onto Anquet Maps on a PC. This became a struggle when I first bought an iMac but Anquet produced a Mac version of their software which worked quite well and I was able to continue with the Garmin using GPSBabel. I use Adobe Lightroom for managing and processing my photographs and when they introduced a Map module that will show where all images are taken I looked for a nice easy way to create the required gpx files. I started using Geotag Photos Pro on my iPhone and this worked very well the iPhone gps picking up a signal where the Garmin struggled. I should however mention that the Garmin is now quite elderly! I can email the gpx from my iPhone to my iMac and then I can load it into Anquet Maps to maintain the record of our walks and into Lightroom to see where the numerous photos I take on the walks all originated. I also use GPS Tracks app for recording tracks and times. This is a good app for my purposes and provides a lot more information than Geotag Photo.
In 2013 I started using the OS Map Finder app. This unfortunately did not record times for each location so was useless for geotagging photos. It also froze up too frequently. Current versions seem far better (2016).
Many thanks to Anquet for giving me permission to use screen shots of the maps on this site. Please note that these are only low resolution and are not intended to be for printing.
Anquet has been developing a new programme called Outdoor Map Navigator for both PC and Mac. I have been doing a bit of testing on Beta versions and this is coming along nicely. Hopefully the full releae will be available soon.
See the Links Page for further information.