Mendip Mapping

Surprising literally no one, given the circumstances, the UCI yesterday upheld the bans and the stripping of titles that USADA handed out to Armstrong. They will meet again on Friday to work out whom, if anyone, to award the seven Tour de France titles to. Bearing in mind the widespread nature of doping in the professional peleton at the time it could go literally anywhere. There’s a fair chance that anyone who was riding a bike clean in the early 2000s is in line for them, so by this time next week even I could be a champion.

In anticipation of my possible new award I did yet more riding last weekend. I took on an old favourite classic, which I’ve spoken about before, on the Mendips. This time I can bring you the actual idea of where I went and give an extra element to my stories of steep hills and well known down-hills.



This route included a sneaky little run down one of the built downhill runs. These look ace as they feature big jumps and fast berms, and I wasn’t really able to ride them as hard as I might have had I not been alone on the ride. I’m not 100% sure about the legality of the trails so I won’t highlight them (although I’m sure you can work it out from the details above) to make sure they stay there for more fun in the future.

Looking at the detail I’m able to bring on where rides go has brought up two other issues that it’s worth mentioning. Firstly I’ve been impressed with the open source mapping resource OpenStreetMap which covers the mobile mapping for this app on my phone. For once this is an online map resource that includes byways and bridleways and I’ll be investigating more to see if it can be a starting point for some new rides.

To finish, I suddenly became aware of this court case in the US regarding Strava, another similar app that allows you to race other users virtually over trails. I can’t understand why anyone would think that using an app like this removes any personal responsibility from riding within your limits. It’s a tragedy that someone died and I feel for his family wanting someone to blame but fail to see how it’s the fault of anyone but the person who made the decision to ride the hill faster. People will always race and people will always push themselves, whether they have an online fancy app to do it or not. If the legal claim is successful in favour of the rider’s family it will surely put every map-maker or race organiser at risk of legal action?

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