I noticed earlier today that Google Maps seems to have improved its satellite coverage for the UK. I haven’t noticed any announcements about it but you can now see pretty cool images of all sorts of places:
It’s not complete, but it’s a lot better and more recent imagery that before, and it doesn’t have a join running right through my house!
Update: Seems they updated on 2nd June.
Really nice and pretty relaxed weekend up in the Lakes for DESC. Went up Friday night with Hugh (thanks for driving!) and the realisation that I had to camp in March came to me all of a sudden. Tent looked its usual saggy self once put up on a GT slope but managed to find a line for my thermarest between the mounds. Wasn’t too cold at night once I’d wrapped my towel around myself for a bit of extra insulation.
Saturday Martin and I got permission of go off and do our own thing so we met up with Tim for a little walk. Parked up in Patterdale and walked St Sunday Crag, Fairfield, Dollywaggon Pike, Nethermost Pike and Helvellyn. About 20km in all taking 8 hours. Tim’s done the business on spareweekend.com so check out the details there.
Sunday the Explorers tried out the new low ropes course at Great Tower. It’s pretty cool and a great asset to the site. Unfortunately one of the trees has fallen down taking out a couple of obstacles so it’s not a complete circuit at the moment.
Numbers were down for DESC but in terms of atmosphere and activities it was as good if not better than previous years and I think the Explorers catering in smaller groups is a model for future events. But please someone stop me from making scrambled egg next time 
Off to the Outdoors Show at the NEC in the morning. Not sure if there’ll be many great deals but hopefully can bag myself a couple of bargains
Tim’s blogged about our walk yesterday over Crinkle Crags. Weather was pretty crap and ended up coming off down The Band rather than bagging Bow Fell.
Just trying to book tickets for the Ordnance Survey Outdoors Show and having trouble getting past the awful NEC website. You’d think that gone midnight on a Sunday night would be a quiet time for them but it’s shockingly slow. I have no idea how they cope with bookings for big events like Take That which sell out in hours. If anyone from the National Exhibition Centre is clued up enough to be checking for negative comments online - please, improve your website!
And if anyone is looking to save a few quid, use the voucher code ORDNANCESURVEY where you can get two tickets for £9.50 each plus £1 booking fee.
So it was Moonlight on Saturday. For the first time Explorers and Scouts were let off from different points - Scouts from Camelot theme park and Explorers (plus the two Veteran teams) from Yarrow Valley Park just outside Chorley.
We did fairly well losing just 2 or 3 lives depending on whether one of them counted. Our plan to walk down the A59 stopping at every pub, Chinese and fish and chip shop on the way was scuppered by Chris changing the rules so we had to do without such luxuries. In the end it was a good job we headed west before Burscough as continuing to Aughton would have added a significant distance and we were pretty tight for time.
Our total distance was 32km (about 20 miles) which isn’t too bad really! We won the Veteran prize beating the firemen by a few minutes (and possibly a life). Most of Alcatraz’s winners took the Explorer trophy and first prize overall while 45th Ormskirk won for the Scouts and Leigh, Tom, Nev and Jamie won the catcher prize.
My plan was to get home and start programming for PHP Throwdown. Well that did happen… for about 2 hours before I went to bed for 9 hours and woke up feeling worse than I had before sleeping. I’ve done a bit of work on the website and I’ll try to finish it off over the next week or so.