how far did I really walk?

[methodist.pilgrim.98]

I walked Burgos to León, Rabanal del Camino to Ponferrada.

The guidebooks vary in their distances but does anyone know of a source where someone has used GPS to be utterly precise about the length of the journey?

 

[Rebekah Scott]

I can´t tell you how far you walked. I don´t do numbers.

But I can tell you "Enhorabuena!" You made it!

Rebekah

 

[WanderingChristian]

I had considered wearing a pedometer in my Camino, having measured how many steps I make in a mile. It stands to reason that a pilgrim wearing a pedometer would write down the number of steps taken in their logbook (journal) and add it up over the course of the journey. In order to make it accurate, the pedometer would need to be reset at each albergue. Just an idea.

De Colores y Buen Camino,
8) WanderingChristian :arrow:

 

[micamino73]

Just use the trail app on the iphone, will give exact distances


---
I am here: http://tapatalk.com/map.php?lz2jx5

 

[methodist.pilgrim.98]

Hi Rebekah, thank you for your hospitality it certainly helped me make it. In fact I exceeded my goal for this journey and have set my self up nicely for the last part of my Camino Frances by sections. Ponferadda to O Cebreiro.

I am interested in how far I walked but, even more importantly, every time I give a power point presentation on the Camino the question always comes up, "How far did you walk?"

I don't do humility, :shock: but nor do I like Pinochio, so I like to be accurate.

Micamino73, certainly the best solution except that I don't own an iphone and if you saw the mobile phone that I carry- it is not even mine, it is provided by my work - you're only reaction would be, how quaint!

Wandering Christian the biggest problem with pedometers is that they are not as accurate as the iphone. I believe that the two guides I have were written by people wearing them and the distances vary by anything up to a couple of km.

But hey, it's nice to engage with you all on this.

 

[GunnarW]

There are 5 alternative roads. If you took the orange dotted camino in the Brierley Guide and if my calculations are good: you did 292,5km.
The distances in the guide are quite accurate. I noticed that sometimes the interval distances were sometimes wrong but the total/stage was right.

 

[micamino73]

Micamino73, certainly the best solution except that I don't own an iphone and if you saw the mobile phone that I carry- it is not even mine, it is provided by my work - you're only reaction would be, how quaint!

If you want to record exact distances you need a GPS device or one of those measuring wheels.

I did a walk last sunday and I thought it would be 34km but it was only 33km. GPS devices give best data, time, elevation etc.. You could also get a Satnav which would do the trick.

If you are giving presentations then you can export the iphone data nicely it can be downloaded to google maps endless possibilities. Either iphone or another GPS enabled phone.

http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=1481303

 

[methodist.pilgrim.98]

Hi GunnarW

I don't own a Brierley and I think you have added the Leon to Rabanal walk into the calculation you give. I have already walked that route twice so I "jumped" it this time, taking a train and a taxi.

I'll try to see if I can borrow a copy of Brierley and see what he reckons.

micamino73 if I buy and iphone just for the distances I walk on the Camino my wife will go spare. apart from that I don't need one though I accept that you are offering the perfect solution.

but thank you to you both for engaging in this thread.

 

[GunnarW]

Oh, yes I did,
Please substract 74,8 km.
Greetings.

 

[dougfitz]

If you want to record exact distances you need a GPS device or one of those measuring wheels.

I did a walk last sunday and I thought it would be 34km but it was only 33km. GPS devices give best data, time, elevation etc.. You could also get a Satnav which would do the trick.

If you are giving presentations then you can export the iphone data nicely it can be downloaded to google maps endless possibilities. Either iphone or another GPS enabled phone.

http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=1481303

The only accepted method of measuring road courses for IAAF events is the calibrated bicycle method, which in turn relies on a steel tape measure. Neither the surveyors wheel nor a GPS is used for accurate course measurement. The uncertainty in the measurement is not to exceed 0.1%, perhaps a bit more accurate than might be necessary on the Camino .

SATNAV devices (GPS and GLONASS being the only two global systems available at present) can be made very accurate, but these are quite expensive survey instruments, not the hand held or vehicle mounted devices used by the general public, or the even less accurate GPS functions on smartphones of various manufacturer.

Over the past two weekends, I have participated in check walks for the Canberra International Walking Weekend, and carried both a Garmin Etrex 30 and a Nokia smartphone running the Sportstracker application on all four of the walks. Over 20km, the Garmin was within 400m or about 2% of the length measured by bicycle, while the smartphone was just over 2km over - about 10% greater. There were similar results on the 10 km walks.

Some of this extra can be accounted for in deviations from the shortest path, individual detours for toilet stops and the like that all get measured, but that does not explain the large differences between the dedicated GPS and a smartphone.

So I am not particularly surprised if your smartphone was different from another measurement by 1km - I think that is probably quite a good result. The unanswerable question is which to believe - the GPS or your other measurement?

Regards,

 

[Bridget and Peter]

We are about to walk on the ruta del costa/norte - and although technologically well behind the times would like to use a tracker thingy on my Samsung Galaxy - if only to keep our young informed that we are still alive and moving. I have got as far as looking on the phone 'store' and am bewildered by the choice. We don't need sporty things like calories burnt etc - just want to record our route and be able to transmit it to our blog or somewhere where we can be checked up upon and find it ourselves afterwards for information. Anyone able to help, please?

 

[evanlow]

Bridget and Peter,

I think the battery in the Galaxy will barely be able to last the 8 hours or so walk. I've been doing that on the old iPhone on my bike and I can only keep the tracking going for around 6 hours or so.

When the GPS kicks in, these things really sucks battery power.

 

[Bridget and Peter]

I think the battery in the Galaxy will barely be able to last the 8 hours or so walk.

I did wonder about that. It is more important to have it alive in the evening to write up the blog, read a book (I was thrilled to be introduced the FREE Kindle app!)
Can I use GPS if I turn it onto take a picture for the blog? That would be another way of logging our progress. I was thinking of making a point of posting a daily picture, or maybe two - one of the overnight stop and one of lunch stop?

thanks
Bridget

 

[KiwiNomad06]

When you leave Le-Puy-en-Velay for Santiago, you first have to climb a steep hill for half an hour or so on a footpath next to the road. When you reach the top of that, the path flattens out somewhat for a while, and you start to follow a track that goes off-road. And at around that point, you see a sign on a blue background with a yellow star/shell, that gives the distance to Santiago as 1521km. You breathe a deep breath at that point and think 'I'd better get started then'- one step at a time.

But then, barely 20m from the first sign you see another official looking sign, this one with a brown background, but also definitely on the walking trail rather than the road. It also has the star/shell motif, but this time it quotes the distance as 1698km. Hmmmmm.

I don't know why there is such a discrepancy, but I suspect one sign might be put up by an Amis group, and another by a more 'governmental' organisation. And there are certainly alternatives along the route that would make quite a difference to total distance walked. When people ask me how far I walked, I am never quite sure how to answer them...
Margaret

 

[dougfitz]

When people ask me how far I walked, I am never quite sure how to answer them...

I know that feeling. I walked from SJPP to Santiago, and the odometer I was using said I had walked 900km. This might be accounted for by the 800km of the route and a combination of getting a bit lost on many days, sightseeing around the towns and villages, poor GPS performance in narrow streets, and the other inherent inaccuracies of a hand held GPS unit.

Can I use GPS if I turn it onto take a picture for the blog? That would be another way of logging our progress. I was thinking of making a point of posting a daily picture, or maybe two - one of the overnight stop and one of lunch stop?

That is an option, but it often takes my phone GPS a little while to synch properly with the GPS satellite constellation. Also, as has been mentioned, using the GPS on my smartphone increases the power consumption dramatically.

I use a GPS data logger, often called a photo tracker or something similar. The one I have is from a firm named Gisteq, but there are others available that are similar.

The first one I used had an internal battery that needed to be recharged each night, and it was often difficult to do that. As a result, I didn't always get a full day's location information to match with my photos. I have replaced it with one that uses a conventional AA cell (alkaline or rechargeable). The battery on that seems to last about 12 hours of continuous use, more than enough for any day I did on the Camino.

 

[fraluchi]

I walked from SJPP to Santiago, and the odometer I was using said I had walked 900km.

Somewhere along the walk last year we met a person with some sort of gadget (I am not a specialist) that counted the number of steps. Taking the average step distance it figured out the distance walked. We figured that we had done about 24 km that day, and in fact the gadget wasn't far off (we knew better, of course! ) We seem to remember that on one day we had done over 34'000 steps and were still 2 hours' walking from our destination.
Multiply that by the number of days between Roncesvalles and Santiago and it's no wonder our boots were giving signs of "fair wear and tear".
In Roncesvalles the road sign says 790 Km. to Santiago. Acacio measured the distance a few years ago and came up with a bit less than that. And he didn't take the shortcut around Viloria de Rioja :roll:

 

[methodist.pilgrim.98]

Do you I'm really beginning to wish I'd never asked!

Doug, I have found your replies absolutely rivetting. I didn't understand a word of them but that didn't stop me enjoying them enormously. :wink:

I might just go back to using Alison Raju (as I did in all my previous calculations) and stick with the 210km given by her book.

But then I liked the idea of 292.5 - 74.8 and coming out with 217.7, especially as it boosts my performance.

Thank you GunnarW for that.

I have also found the explanation as to why I can only walk between 20 and 25km per day. After 8 hours my internal battery has run down and I have to pull into a recharging station - the albergue - before I go completely flat. :lol:

Love and peace to you all.

 

[GunnarW]

Let’s see more in detail the difference between Alison’s guide and my estimation.
1) between Frómista and Carrión DLC, did you go (a) straight, straight, straight and counted all the small poles or did you (b) followed the river Ucieza after Población de Campos and said hello to my two stork friends. If (a), please substract 1,3km
2) after Carrión DLC, you arrived after 17km at Calzadilla de la Cueza and had a rest. After a kilometer, there was a possibility to take a rural road at the left. Did you take that road (a) and noticed at least 4 different kinds of butterflies or did you (b) followed the N120 and noticed at least 40 different kinds of automobile brands? If you answer is (b), please substract 0,3 km.
3) after Sahagún, there was again a choice to make. Did you went (a) straight straight straight and tried to calculate in which century the small planted trees would make a comfortable shade for the peregrino or did you (b) follow the Via Romana, enjoyed the hospitality of the inhabitants of Calzadilla de los Hermanillos and visited their small open air Roman Museum. If (a), please substract again 1,9km
4) Finally after Molinaseca just before entering Ponferrada. Did you (a) made a curve at the left side by passing Campo while admiring the grape fields and had a little chat with the employee of the bodega about Bierzo wines or did you (b) simply bought a bottle of wine on the main road straight to the metropolis? If you answer is (b), again minus 0,9 km.

 

[Peter Robins]

The only accepted method of measuring road courses for IAAF events is the calibrated bicycle method, which in turn relies on a steel tape measure. Neither the surveyors wheel nor a GPS is used for accurate course measurement.

but that will measure the distance travelled by the bicycle, which will not be the same as any given walker, as the walker will not follow the exact same line. On events like you mention, participants will keep roughly to the straight line, as they want to be competitive. Road distances are generally measured for vehicles, and cars too will generally keep to the same lane and so travel roughly the same distance. But this is not the case with something like walkers on the Camino. For example, on rural roads with little traffic, people wander about all over the place, turn around to chat to someone, wander to the other side to look at the view, etc etc. Over short distances, the difference will be trivial, but it will mount up over a walk of several weeks. Different people following the same route are unlikely to walk the same distance.

SATNAV devices (GPS and GLONASS being the only two global systems available at present) can be made very accurate, but these are quite expensive survey instruments, not the hand held or vehicle mounted devices used by the general public, or the even less accurate GPS functions on smartphones of various manufacturer.

GPS devices do not measure the distance you covered, they record your position at given intervals, draw a line between each, and measure that. The accuracy will depend not only on how accurate the readings are, but also on how often a reading is taken. There are plenty of GPS tracks out there which clearly only take a reading every 5 or 10 mins, which is hopelessly inaccurate. Plus GPS often can't take continuous readings - you'd struggle to get a meaningful measurement of St Adrian's Tunnel, for example

Over the past two weekends, I have participated in check walks for the Canberra International Walking Weekend, and carried both a Garmin Etrex 30 and a Nokia smartphone running the Sportstracker application on all four of the walks. Over 20km, the Garmin was within 400m or about 2% of the length measured by bicycle, while the smartphone was just over 2km over - about 10% greater. There were similar results on the 10 km walks.

If I extrapolate that to 200km, I get 4km and 20km out respectively, and say 800km from the Pyrenees to Santiago, I get 16km and 80km! I find that rather hard to believe. I suspect the difference comes more from the way the distance between readings is calculated. Try dumping the tracks to your computer and then using a standard geometric formula, like Vincenty's, to calculate the total distance. (Though even Vincenty's won't be the same as your bicycle, as it doesn't take altitude into account.)

At the end of the day, does it really matter? There is no such thing as the 'correct' distance between places. For me, the distances given in guidebooks (and on my maps) are there to help you plan your day(s). Anyone who thinks they are "utterly precise" is deluding his/her self

 

[fraluchi]

At the end of the day, does it really matter? There is no such thing as the 'correct' distance between places. For me, the distances given in guidebooks (and on my maps) are there to help you plan your day(s). Anyone who thinks they are "utterly precise" is deluding his/her self

The latter is obviously true. And on the other hand, a pilgrimage to Santiago is not about measuring distances, but scaling down our worldly attitudes.

 

[methodist.pilgrim.98]

Peter is, of course, absolutely right that precise distances don't matter, but I am a little sad and like to be accurate.

Part of my asking is that since my copy of Alison's book was written in 2002 there have been changes to the Camino and also better measuring devices to work with.

GunnarW, 1a, 2b, 3a so I have deducted a further 3.5km off my 271.7 to get 214.2.

That's still 4.2km more than Alison reckoned. :lol:

Which ever way I look at it I passed the 1500 mile and 2600km mark on my 9th Camino and am very happy with that. :mrgreen:

 

[Mysticl]

I have a Polar HRM with a footpod that I will be taking as my luxury item. The footpod attaches to my shoe and is calibrated to my stride length. I can track calories burned, distance traveled, time elapsed, my speed over ground and many many other variables. I love it. On my local training hikes I have been particularly interested in my speed and distance traveled. I am not a fast walker so will likely be passed by the faster walkers over the course of a day but knowing my speed and the distance to the next bed will help me to better plan my stages. I am a numbers gal ... I like to crunch them, to see how I'm doing over time ... and it gives me something to do The HRM and footpad are compact and don't weigh much more than a camera. It will be interesting to see how many calories I burn on any given day as well although I will NOT be counting calories while in Spain. Still I confess I wouldn't mind losing a few more pounds and won't complain if I am fortunate enough to do so

 

[dougfitz]

Over the past two weekends, I have participated in check walks for the Canberra International Walking Weekend, and carried both a Garmin Etrex 30 and a Nokia smartphone running the Sportstracker application on all four of the walks. Over 20km, the Garmin was within 400m or about 2% of the length measured by bicycle, while the smartphone was just over 2km over - about 10% greater. There were similar results on the 10 km walks.

If I extrapolate that to 200km, I get 4km and 20km out respectively, and say 800km from the Pyrenees to Santiago, I get 16km and 80km! I find that rather hard to believe. I suspect the difference comes more from the way the distance between readings is calculated. Try dumping the tracks to your computer and then using a standard geometric formula, like Vincenty's, to calculate the total distance. (Though even Vincenty's won't be the same as your bicycle, as it doesn't take altitude into account.)

Actually Peter, whether you believe it or not, this is typical of the results that I observe regularly over short distances. Here is an example of a track measured using a smartphone
http://www.sports-tracker.com/#/workout/dougfitz/fighaif18tsqvu12. This was of a 3000m competition walk held on a standard 400m athletics track at the Australian Institute of Sport, and I started tracking at the start of the event, and stopped tracking within 5m of the finish (we walkers don't tend to take forever to slow down at the end the way sprinters might ). You will have to take my word for it that I would have stayed close to the competition line for the whole walk, and didn't deviate from that. So there was minimal elevation change, no course deviation from a well understood and known flat and level course, and a clear view of the satellite constellation, yet the GPS measured a distance of 3.3km, a clear 10% greater than I actually walked.

Here is another example. It is the track for a 5000m event http://www.sports-tracker.com/#/workout/dougfitz/b1siup682ocs9912 at the same venue the week before, where the GPS application has recorded a distance of 5.62km - an even less accurate measurement. If you look at the lap information, you will see how the error accumulates, noting that there might be a difference of one or two metres on the point at which I hit the lap button.

It's not so much whether the distance matters or not, but if it does matter to someone, they need to have a realistic appreciation of how accurate a GPS enabled smartphone or other handheld GPS devices might be. The all have their own inaccuracies. My experience is that these can be in the order of 10% of the displayed measurements, and despite your disbelief, I have strong evidence of that collected in a variety of circumstances. The two examples I have given you are powerful evidence because of the controlled conditions in which they were obtained.

My point in the original post and again here is that people shouldn't be fooled into believing a GPS device is accurate. The fact that there is an apparent precision of the measurements displayed does not equate to those being accurate. Neither should they stop using a GPS if they are interested in that - but they should understand the limitations of this particular tool.

Regards,

 

[Peter Robins]

My point in the original post and again here is that people shouldn't be fooled into believing a GPS device is accurate.

The accuracy of GPS is well-known and quantified: to quote the US government "the GPS signal in space will provide a "worst case" pseudorange accuracy of 7.8 meters at a 95% confidence level". A reasonable-quality GPS device should be accurate to within 3-5m in 'normal' conditions. Smartphones may well be less accurate (though I suspect this may be due more to the poorer-quality clock than anything else). Other things, like whether you're on the move, or what the weather's like, may affect the accuracy. Either way, this is all rather academic for the average walker, as we don't need very accurate measurements anyway.

But that's a separate issue from the accuracy of the distance calculated, which will depend on: a) how often a reading is taken; b) how the distance is calculated. A reading every minute or so - say, 60-80m for the 'average' walker, about the same as plotting it on the map - should be adequate; ideally, you would take more readings where the route bends around a lot. Once you have this 'track' of lat/long positions you can use a standard formula to calculate the sum of the distances between the points. I don't know how the app you're using does that, but however it does it, it has nothing to do with the accuracy of the GPS readings.

On a practical note, in the years I've been plotting GPS tracks on maps, I have never found any problems with accuracy. I have found two opposite problems of either too few (as mentioned before) or too many readings, producing an enormous file with zillions of mostly redundant positions. Another common GPS problem is that people forget to switch the thing off when they're wandering around a town, producing a spaghetti-bowl effect in their track; also, if they take a wrong turn and have to go back, this is all faithfully recorded.

 

[dougfitz]

My point in the original post and again here is that people shouldn't be fooled into believing a GPS device is accurate.

The accuracy of GPS is well-known and quantified: to quote the US government "the GPS signal in space will provide a "worst case" pseudorange accuracy of 7.8 meters at a 95% confidence level". A reasonable-quality GPS device should be accurate to within 3-5m in 'normal' conditions.

Peter, we appear to be at cross purposes here. I am talking about the practical accuracy of the GPS system, including the user segment that ends in the device in one's hand. The figures you are quoting may well be correct, but they are for the 'signal in space' and only apply at the upper edge of the ionosphere. I don't have arms long enough to lift my real life GPS that high.

Further, the site you refer to states

Real-world data collected by the FAA show that some high-quality GPS SPS receivers currently provide better than 3 meter horizontal accuracy.

which is a far narrower claim than you make above. Given that this site is focussed on US aircraft users who have access to WAAS, and high quality is not well defined, I am not sure that I see data that supports the 3-5m claim that you have made. Do you have another source for this?