OpenStreetMap
5 or more occasions each day currently I go hunting through JOSM imagery looking for road roundabouts. I’m not completely mad; they are the best way (short of making GPS tracks whilst personally surveying) to correct the Imagery offsets for Bing & Esri satellite photos.
The above has happened so frequently lately during this Lockdown period (not being able to go out & survey) that I’ve become utterly obsessed with them, spending half the day, on one occasion, hunting out grass-filled roundabouts to map.
I’m currently mapping schools in Northern Ireland, and the Irish have just a bare fraction of the number & variety of road roundabouts that we English have. However, what I have observed them to have is large road-enclosed circles within their fields. Don’t believe me? Well, I’ve observed more than one. Here is the latest, which I mapped (due south of Downpatrick):
What on earth is that about?
Discussion
Comment from Jude_2437 on 8 May 2020 at 00:59
The ‘large road-enclosed circle’ you found, I believe is an equestrian facility, probably used to train horses on a racecourse.
Comment from alan_gr on 8 May 2020 at 08:18
I think Jude_2437 is right, it looks like a circular track (probably dirt surface) for exercising or training horses. Here is an example from the Republic of Ireland: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/108239686
Comment from alexkemp on 8 May 2020 at 08:58
Thank you Jude & Alan for scratching my intellectual itch. I never thought of Northern Ireland as an equestrian centre, but I guess that that is just my normal ignorance. I’ll go back & fix the mapping to try & reflect that.
Comment from alan_gr on 8 May 2020 at 09:05
There are only two racecourses in Northern Ireland so you overall impression was probably fair enough. One of the two is Downpatrick, in the area you were looking at.
Comment from spiregrain on 8 May 2020 at 17:50
I too am looking at adding some schools to NI. The charts and tables here https://osm.mathmos.net/schools/progress/BT/ are naturally very helpful. I recently (mostly) finished the E and EC postcodes, and NI has the lowest completion rate of what’s left.
I sorted by Postcode and began working my way down it yesterday. I’ve only managed a handful so far; but I noticed that some of them are closed (according to aerial photography, one of those has been built over by housing).
You’ll probably encounter some Irish language schools too (in the sense of schools where Irish is the everyday language used). I’ve added the tag language:ga=main to these, but perhaps there is something better. There were two of them in my first batch.
Comment from alexkemp on 9 May 2020 at 19:11
Hi spiregrain
I’m making use of the same site, and came across one of the schools that you had mapped (St Oliver Plunkett Primary School at BT11).
For NI I’m finding these three to be useful additions to mathmos.net:
The first two are Northern Ireland-specific school search sites, whilst the last one occasionally has web-address URLs that the first one does not. However, I’m often left with a generic web-search for the URL (I find Google maps to be best for that).
I’m making a point of entering full Contact & Address details (using the JOSM presets) as that is precisely what will be searched for (and why, imo, OSM maps can be useful).
Comment from alexkemp on 9 May 2020 at 22:34
@spiregrain:
I see little point in 2 of us using the same site (mathmos.net) to do the same work - far too much chance of interfering with each other. So, I’ve wrapped up the table that I was working on in the BT postcode section, and will switch to HU instead (my home town was Hull, and I spent my youth working in the East Yorkshire region).
Comment from spiregrain on 11 May 2020 at 07:08
@alexkemp: Fair enough, re: moving to HU. But I suspect BT will take longer, so do feel free to chip in any time. You could possibly avoid collisions by starting at the other end of the table - with the BT94s, etc.
And thanks for the website resources - I hadn’t found all of those!
Regards,
K
Comment from alexkemp on 11 May 2020 at 19:05
@spiregrain:
Just 9 schools in the East Riding of Yorkshire have an EduBase ID mapped, and (so far) almost none have contacts nor addresses fully mapped. So, I suspect that HU may take longer than BT. If I get to the end & you are still going, then I’ll start at the end & map towards you.
This is definitely a marathon rather than a sprint. It’s amazing that so much much has been mapped, and yet as soon as you dip your toe in it is obvious that so much remains to be done.
I’m pleased that I switched. I was enjoying exploring the NI countryside, even if only vicariously, but EY is the place I was born, brought up in & made a good living from as a young man. It’s 40+ years since I travelled it and, even if on occasions bitter sweet, a pleasure to revisit.
Comment from spiregrain on 12 May 2020 at 12:27
One of the very few marathons available this year!
I too will eventually get to some institutions I attended; though I understand two of the three have been demolished and rebuilt since my day.
Comment from spiregrain on 3 July 2020 at 16:56
@alexkemp:
With today’s update of Rob’s school system, all the NI schools are now DONE. Nice clean and green display here, with all the red bobbles limited to the Republic of Ireland - https://osm.mathmos.net/schools/progress/BT
Thanks for your help and encouragement!