Walking in Mt Royal National Park

After years of driving on the New England Highway through Singleton, and passing the sign at the turnoff to Lake St Clair and Mt Royal National park, and wondering what’s up there, yesterday I finally got to drive up there and explore a bit. We drove all the way up to the Youngsville picnic area, which was very neat and very quiet.
youngsville

The information board at the picnic area shows a “Creek Walking Track” and says that it is “long” and “strenuous” and “requires a good level of fitness”. Unfortunately it didn’t give any indication of how long, either in distance or walking time.

creekwalkmap

So we set off anyway on the southern leg of the loop, with the intention of seeing how far we could get, with the fallback plan of just returning back the same track if we didn’t have enough time to do the whole loop. We didn’t make it all the way down in our allotted time, but from my GPS recording, later loaded into Google Earth, I can see that we made it about two thirds of the way down to the creek. This downhill walk was 2.25km and took 37 minutes, at quite a brisk walk. From this I would guess that the full loop walk would be about 7km and would take about 3 hours to do? One day I shall go back and see how good my estimates are.

googleearth

Apple Maps #7

applemaps7I noticed today that some of the problems with Apple Maps that I reported to Apple have been corrected. Unfortunately, in some cases they’ve just replaced one error with a different error. e.g. In Canara Place, they’ve correctly added in the connection to University Drive that was missing, but added an extra connection to Sunset Boulevarde that doesn’t exist in the real world.

Update 8 Feb 2015: Two years on and they still haven’t fixed this error, even though I’ve reported it twice.

[This content was originally posted to Google+]

Nokia Maps

So Nokia has released their “HERE Maps” iPhone app to the world. How does it compare with Apple Maps and Google maps? Somewhere in the middle. Of the 6 problems I described in Apple Maps in recent posts, HERE Maps gets 4 of them right, one of them wrong (they show a non-existent river crossing at the Branch), and one half right – They don’t show “Hunter Stadium”, but at least show “International Sports Centre”

I’m still looking forward to getting a Google Maps app back on my iPhone…

[This content was originally posted to Google+]

Apple Maps #4

applemaps4Apple Maps errors – example 4.

See that road running alongside the railway line, and over a creek? I’d suggest navigating that route only if you have a bulldozer with floaties, in order to traverse the road that doesn’t exist and the bridge that doesn’t exist.

[This content was originally posted to Google+]

Apple Maps #2

applemaps2Apple Maps errors – example 2.

The map shows Allowah St joining onto Evelyn St. Well it used to, several decades ago! That section of street has been closed off ever since I’ve lived in Newcastle.

And the map shows that you can drive north from the loop on top of Braye Park. That was closed off at least 10 years ago.

[This content was originally posted to Google+]