Well after a long long wait it seems it's finally about to happen! News arrived today that the deal has been done with Anquet to provide the mapping and the techies have been booked to sort the required front and back ends - so the new OM Routes section is finally getting the green light! It's been over 2 years in the making so it's certainly way overdue, but that's the way of things at Magicalia sometimes. The new timeframe looks like the release should be around the end of July, with a live initial resource of over a hundred routes and instant access for user generated routes. The big news is the new live display and map serving. Users will be able to put their routes in with dsplay on the site almost instant, including Anquet generating a 1:50;000 scale map with the route marked on it where a GPS compatible route is submitted. It's also very welcome with some of the latest forum debates.

 

I don't know what it is about forums, but they seem to attract the best and worst of people. Of late the OM forum has been more like a battlefield than the friendly group it's traditionally been. There's been outright personal attacks with Harry in particular taking it on himself to tell everyone around exactly why they don't fill his model citizen role. BG, in particular, has suffered his venom - and there's probably few nicer and more generous people around than Stef. It actually got to the point where Jon had no option but to threaten a complete thread deletion - and that's a srare as an honest politician! I've come in for a fair bit too, with a couple of minor errors on routes due to changes since I last did them. Apparently I'm supposed to individually check every route the day before publishing, while still maintaining a balance of the various regions.! Now if I got paid £500 per route that would be feasible, but honestly am I expected to go to Scotland one week to check every bridge that used to be there and is till marked on the map hasn't now been removed? Then the next week do the same in the Lakes or Snowdonia?

 

The common factor in this argumentative style seems to be the type of people starting the arguments. It's simple to spend your life criticising others, but I for one am likely to take it a lot more seriously if it's constructive and suggestions are made - but in reality those doing most of the whinging seem to be those who offer little or anything and make no positive contributions whatsoever.

 

With the abandonment of the TGO for this year I finally got my computers back - highlight of the year so far, but now it means setting everything up again. I also managed to escape to The Lake District for a while, first on my own and then again with Cathy. With her childhood spent in Langdale it was the obvious place to return to - and the rare occurence of an almost empty NT camp site. Cathy's uncle Dave (aka Trog) was the manager of the NT site for almost 40 years and such a regular at the Old Dungeon Ghyll he not only had his own reserved seat by the bar but even now has a family photo hanging on the wall. It also gave me the chance to recheck this weeks weekly scrambles on Harrison Stickle - so no complaints this time about them not being bang up to date :)

 

With things finally becoming clearer and the summer almost here it's time to try andresume the blog on a more regular basis and get some good kit testing done - so prepare for more ropute descriptions, gear reviews and general ranting.