Spent today driving around Pennington in Leigh using my GPS to log tracks. Have spent the evening updating the tracks into JOSM.

I now have my eye on Leigh & Atherton, which are very sparse in areas. Anyone else planning to map this area?

The GPS I used is actually my new Palm Pre, which I've had for nearly 3 weeks. Unfortunately there was no OSM software at all when I first acquired it, despite it having built-in GPS. Although to be fair it's only been available in Europe for a few weeks.

I picked up some knowledge of the new Palm webOS development kit (Mojo), and wrote a pretty crude App that logs GPS points, and stores them in an internal database. I've submitted this App to a Pre homebrew website, but it's still awaiting publishing. As soon as it becomes available, I'll put some references to it in the OSM Wiki. I believe there is another App being developed by someone else that does the same thing, but additionally plots the traces on top of the OSM tiles. Watch this space...

I've spent a few hours over the past few weeks adding various streets in Bolton and some towns to the south of Bolton (Atherton/Leigh/Walkden/Little Hulton/Tyldesley etc). All the 'A' roads and motorways are there, but very few residential areas.

Unfortunately, this is one of the most densely populated areas of England, and at my current rate of progress it would probably take a few decades to complete! There are other mappers in the region also who are doing a sterling job at progressing this.

This area is also omitted from the Yahoo arial photograph, so really, unless we pay for more photography, it's going to require a few busy mappers armed with GPSs.

Any volunteers?

Despite the lack of Diary entries, I have been busy recently on the mapping front:

1) Benalmadena (Malaga) where I have some family (Yahoo photography).
2) Bidston Hill on the Wirral.
3) Cheshire Oaks - little bit of tidying.
4) Culcheth near Warrington.
5) Some streets in Wolverton, Milton Keynes.
6) Cala Bona in Majorca (Yahoo photography).
7) Atherton, near Bolton.
8) Risley Moss in Warrington.
9) Walton Hall Gardens in Warrington.
10) Various post boxes in WA5 (Geek alert!)
11) Heaton Park, Manchester
12) Central Warrington

Oakwood is now complete, well sort of, just realised that Pipit Lane is missing... Doh! Birchwood is therefore nearly finished, just a few closes around Glover Road, Birchwood Boulevard, plus buildings & footpaths in the various parks.

I've added some footpaths around Chapelford & Westbrook too.

And finally, I've continued to tackle residential streets surrounding Croxteth Park in Liverpool, albeit through Yahoo aerial maps.

I was aghast last night to discover that major areas of Liverpool are still unmapped, despite there being good Yshoo aerial coverage. So I've added loads of streets around Croxteth Park. I'll leave it for somebody else to name the streets...
(http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Liverpool)
(http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=53.4329&lon=-2.8877&zoom=14&layers=0B00FFF)

I also took GPX tracks of a drive from Runcorn to Widnes & Warrington, although this area is well mapped. These have been uploaded anyway, might help to validate what's there already.

On Sunday I had a walk around Sankey Valley Park, armed with GPS, so have now added quite a few footpaths onto there.
(http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=53.40057&lon=-2.61648&zoom=15&layers=0B00FFF)

For the past week I've been on holiday in Scotland, spending time in Edinburgh & Blairgowrie up in Perthshire, so I took the opportunity to brandish my GPS and collect a lot of mapping data.

I was quite surprised to find that only the main road was present through Blairgowrie, so I've now uploaded quite a few traces, and have edited the main map to add lots of back streets, and a few A and B roads.

There's still a hell of a lot missing here though - still one or two A roads to map, not to mention all the residential streets, footpaths, etc. The yahoo aerial imagery is simply not detailed enough, so we will most probably need GPS traces.

It makes me wonder how we encourage and publicise OSM in such areas. Maybe email tourist information centres and ask them to put up a poster? Or contact local newspapers with an article?

Yesterday I had a little drive around Oakwood, mapping out all the residential closes on the outside of the circular road. Still lots to add for the inner section though...

These have been added to the main map, along with Birchwood Forest Park.

I spent some time on Monday evening adding lots of buildings in Winwick Quay and Gemini Business Park.

I also added various footpaths from around Great Sankey, and it got me thinking as to exactly where it's appropriate to add a footpath. In most villages/towns/cities, it's virtually a given that a road is accompanied by pavements at either side, so it's almost meaningless to add these footpaths.

But in a lot of new developments these days, it seems more and more fashionable to omit them. Certainly where I live, in Great Sankey Warrington, my estate forms part of what used to be the old Burtonwood Airforce base which is slowly being converted into new housing. A great deal of the new road system, mainly primary roads, simply don't have paths at the side. But shared footways/cycleways have been constructed, so it seems that they are significant and should be shown prominently on the map.

The confusion comes in the areas where cycle/footpaths converge onto a road, on both sides, creating a "grey area", and subsequent doubt. Just wondered what other people's thoughts are?

I've now mapped by GPS some new areas in Chapelford, that have either been constructed recently, or still undergoing construction.

This includes Orlando Drive, Atlanta Gardens, Olympia Place, etc.

I've now finished mapping Gorse Covert, using the GPS traces from yesterday. I've also added some more roads in Locking Stumps, using the Yahoo arial photograph.

Today I went for a bike ride around Great Sankey with the GPS, and have now captured various footpaths and parks. These are now added to the main map now.

This lunch time I went for a drive around Birchwood in Warrington with the GPS (as you do).

I've captured the whole of Gorse Covert, and some of the surrounding main roads in Birchwood. I added these main roads into OSM, using JOSM for the first time. I think my tagging isn't quite right, but as I learn more I will revisit these and correct them.

Please head over to:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Warrington
for latest progress.

I live in an area of Warrington that at one time formed the Burtonwood Airforce Base - previously this was the biggest US Airforce outside the USA. But it got decommisioned a good few years ago, and recently it's been developed, and will become the Chapelford Urban Village.

It's slowly beginning to take shape, but it's dismayed me for the past 2 or 3 years that none of this development has been represented on any maps or atlases.

So... having come across OSM in the past few days, I saw this as an opportunity to finally get it on the map. So I set out this lunch time with PDA & Bluetooth on my bike to have a test run at mapping the new estate. I used the OSMTracker PDA software, and it seems to have done the trick. The GPS trace is uploaded.

I tried to use JOSM, but ended up confused, so I'll have to read through the tutorials another day. So I defaulted to Potlatch, and this now seems to have uploaded to OSM.