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These are the entries needed to complete the Route Card. Entries with their title in Bold are recommended to complete Entries with their title in normal text are more optional Group Name: The name you wish your group to be called by. Your name should be easy to understand if your home contact - the people you leave a copy of the route card with - have more than 1 group to be concerned about Group Contact: Generally the person organising the expedition who people should contact for information. They arn't necessarily the Group Leader or even walking with the group. They could however be walking with the group. Contact Telephone Number: The telephone number to contact the Group Contact by. I intended this number to be a number to contact the group contact before the expedition, but it could also be the mobile phone number carried by the group. Be aware however that batteries on mobile phones can fail when you don't want them to (in the wind and wet on top of a hill is a good spot to predict it will fail), and mobile phones DO loose their signal on the hills (90% coverage refers to people, not land area of the UK). So DO NOT rely on a mobile phone to alert someone that you are in trouble, make plans in case it fails. Group Leader: This is the person who is nominated as the leader of the group. The group leader should be experienced, concerned with the safety of the group, able to facilitate the group making decisions on the expedition, and able to recognise problems developing within the group. If the group leader is the same as the Group Contact, you should enter the name in both spaces to avoid confusion. This route card only has spaces for 8 people in total in the expedition group. Larger groups might like to consider splitting into 2 separate groups. Home Contact: This is a person left at a home base near a telephone in case of emergencies. Their role is to help in an emergency situation, and to raise the alarm if you do not return from your expedition. Make sure you tell them When you are leaving, What time you intend to return, When you finish the expedition and all members of the party are safe and What time to start panicking if they don't hear from you. IT is important to ask someone to panic when you don't return for your own safety, but keep the timing realistic for this - being 2 hours late for a day walk is OK, being 2 hours late for 1/2 hour walk might raise concerns. Map Used: If you are using an ordnance survey 1:25000 or 1:50000 scale map, enter its number here (just the number, e.g. 26). When you click on the 'Radio Button' for the scale, the map name will be entered in the space for it, provided that map existed in Feb. 2004 as that number. It is useful for someone looking at your route (to find, or follow you) to confirm you are looking at the same map. The map shown on the route card is the one you should pick up before you leave house! Scale: Just the scale of the map used to identify it further. When you enter this number, the map name will be entered in the space for it, provided that map existed in Feb. 2004 as that number. The most useful map scales are 1:25000 and 1:50000 for these types of expeditions, the larger scale the better. Map Name: If you enter the Map number and then the Scale and you are using an Ordnance Survey map available in feb 2004, the map name will appear here. You can overwrite what appears though. Note about maps: Always use as new a map as you can since things can change on the ground. For example, woods can be cut down removing an obvious point on the horizon to look for. An up to date map might not have the woods drawn on it (but it might) Walking Speed: Experience will tell you how fast you walk at. A fit person can walk for a day at 5km/h. If you are carrying equipment, I would use 4km/h. If I was walking with a group of Young People I would use 3km/h to give them time to navigate and learn what they are doing. For cycling I would use 20km/h for on road cycling, or 12km/h if you have any off road cycling. Use this number for the whole days expedition Start Height: This isn't essential but it will be used to calculate your end height. Date: Just the date when you are going on the expedition. Click on the '??' to the right to see a calendar. This is a useful piece of information to leave with your home contact. You might use the same contact regularly and if you have the date on the piece of paper they can confirm which walk you are walking along Start Time: This is your anticipated start time. From this you can estimate when you will finish your expedition to let your home contact and transport know. If anyone wants to find you en-route (for example assessors in a Duke of Edinburgh Expedition), they will use the start time you say. It is quite important to keep this realistic and to start as near to when you say as you can. If it changes significantly - traffic delays, going home for forgotten equipment, beer the night before - let your home contact know you will be later returning than when you said and they can let other people know as appropriate Expedition Objective: Why are you going on this expedition? Useful to note, for example on Duke of Edinburgh expeditions to remind you. Route Card Route Details Grid reference: Use a 6 digit number to refer to where on the map you intend to get to on that leg of the journey, for example 123456, where 123 refers to the Eastings (grid line numbers along the bottom of the map going west to east for the vertical grid lines) and 456 refers to the Northings (grid line numbers along the edge of the map going south to north for the horizontal grid lines). There are many pages on the internet to show how to read a grid reference. Basically look at the grid line (light blue horizontal and vertical grid drawn on the map 2cm (for 1:50000 scale map) or 4cm (for 1:25000 scale) apart) to the left of the point you want to describe and look at its number (a 2 digit number like 52). Then divide the distance between the 2 grid lines left and right of your point into 10 and estimate how many tenths across your point is (a single digit number like 4). Put the 2 numbers together as one 3 digit number: (grid line number)(number of tenths), for example 524. Repeat this for the Northings, use the line below your point for the grid line number and then the tenths between that line and the one above your point. This might give you a number like 174. Put these 2 numbers together as a 6 digit number (eastings)(northings), for example 524174. This is the number to enter into the route card, just numbers, no spaces, points or anything like that Description of Place Going to: How you would describe where you are going to, for example Farmers Farm, or Cairn, or Path T Junction - use a description that you can identify a place on the map. Use as a double check for with the Grid Reference to make sure your going in the right way. It takes a while to pin point your position on the map using a grid reference, however local people might know the name of a place. If someone is looking for you in bad weather, they don't want to have to sit and work out your point from grid references if you can say your location is "Captain Cooks Monument" - they might know where that is and can get there without needing the map Route Description: Describe the route you are going along. For example Follow footpath uphill, keeping stream to your left. If your route description is good you might be able to follow just that instead of referring to a map all the time Notes: Just notes for along the route, for example, Stop for lunch here. Notes can add interest to a route as well (good if you know the area and someone else is using the route), for example "Look out for the memorial to the WW2 aircrew who crashed to the west" Height Gained: How much uphill are you going? This will affect your speed. Enter only the amount you are going up in this column (don't use negative numbers). Count all the uphill, even if you go down as well during the leg. The calculation for time taken adds 1 minute extra for each contour line you climb up. Height Lost: How much downhill are you going? This can affect your speed. Enter only the amount you are going down in this column (don't use negative numbers). Count all the downhill, even if you go up as well during the leg. Refer to Steep Descent for how downhill affects your speed Steep Descent: When you are walking down a steep hill, you will go slower and more carefully. This steep descent factor reflects this, adding 1/2 a minute to your walk for every 10m you descend steeply. You can vary this. Breaks: Note here if you are stopping for a rest at all during your walk. As a rough guide I would say 10 minutes every hour walked. Also note for lunch breaks. Note in the Notes section that you are taking a break. Wiggle: Route Wiggle is the amount your route legs deviate from a straight line. The calculations work out the distance between points 'as the crow flies', wiggle will correct this for 'as a walker walks'. There is one value to be applied to the whole route. I have found this to be about 10% difference. |