Twenty Two Beccles Walks. Fourteen Local Pubs

Site Root

You're Lazy and Fat ...

said the doctor. Well almost. What he actually said was, "You really ought to try and lose some weight" and "Try to get some more exercise".

Beat the Credit Crunch and Get Fit

These walks are part of my attempt to get fit and beat the credit crunch by leaving the car at home.

The Walks

Most of the walks are circular. The routes avoid roads, where possible, and especially busy roads. The yellow lines show roads, rights of way or other waymarked paths but please read our disclaimer. The red lines show other routes. You can download the kml files and see the tracks in Google Earth. There is even a tool to "fly" along the tracks. With GPS Babel, you can convert the kml files for use with your sat-nav device if you have one. Paper maps are good too. Here are the walks, shortest first.

The Technology

• wikiloc. This is a huge international database of walking routes. It also has mountain bike, canoe, sailing and other trails.
   
• Compass.
  If you forget your compass, never mind moss on trees. Use TV aerials.
  In this area, they mostly point about 15^o north of due west.
  Satellite dishes point roughly south.
   
• Ordnance Survey Maps to locate the rights of way ...
      Explorer maps, sheets 231 and OL40
      Landranger maps, sheets 134 and 156
      Use the O. S. website
   
• Google Earth Waypoints - I matched up the OS maps with Google Earth and created waypoints. I saved these in a KML file.
   
• GPS-Babel. This useful tool is able to translate most computer map formats into most other map formats. I used it to convert KML into Garmin GDB.
   
• Garmin Mapsource software. I used this to convert the Google Earth waypoints into routes for use in a sat-nav device.
   
• Garmin eTrex Vista HCx. This is a hand-held sat-nav. With the routes loaded, following the rights of way is usually easy unless the paths have been ploughed up. The track logs have been converted into kml files that Google Earth understands.

You're Lazy and Fat and you Drink Too Much!

If you do these walks at a "power walking" pace and drink mineral water at the pubs, you will get fit and thin. If, like me, you stroll to the pub and amble home after a beer or two and perhaps an all-day-breakfast, you will be doomed to get the advice above. However I'm still fitter and thinner than I would have been without this enjoyable programme.

WEBSITE: http://www.softwareforeducation.com/BecclesWalks/index.php

Disclaimers and Contact Information