Guest blog by Ordnance Survey’s Gwyn Hughes-Jones

This 18km walk takes in the two highest points in Fife, Scotland and uses OS Explorer Map 370.  East and West Lomond provide impressive panoramic views over the Kingdom of Fife, a county which, unlike much of Scotland is surprisingly flat.  Fife is beautiful, constituting mostly of fertile farmland and beautiful coastlines.

The walk starts from the car park at NO224 034 at Holl Reservoir.  From the car park, turn right up the hill to the crossroads at West Balgothrie. Take the right hand turn and follow the track for 2.5km to West Feal Farm. Go through the gate (over the stile) and continue up the track, through the wood, for just over a kilometere until you emerge out onto Bishop Hill. The path heads northwards towards West Lomond which can be seen approx. 4km in the distance. The path is fairly easy going and not too wet underfoot.

After 3km head down slightly into Glen Vale and start the slow zig zag ascent of West Lomond.  This is made slightly easier by contouring round to the left of the hill and joining up with a large path heading to the trig point on top at 522m.

From the trig point, follow the well trodden path to the north west down the side of West Lomond.  Continue on the track west for 3.5km past Maiden Castle Hill Fort until you reach the car park and toilets at Craigmead.  From here it a short 1.5 miles to the top of East Lomond.  On your way, watch out for the remains of the Lime kilns on your right hand side and the Iron Age hill fort on top.  The path is easy going for most of the walk apart from the last 200m where the ascent is quite steep.  However, the climb is worth the extra effort as the view reaches as far as the Caringorms on clear days: there is a panorama display on top pointing out what can be seen.

Once you have had your fill of the views, head back down the steep ascent and follow the marked footpath to Easter Glasslie.  Take the road to the right for 300m until you come to another footpath sign.  Follow the path down to the Ballo reservoir and continue for 2km through Balgothrie Farm and the wood until you emerge at the waterworks.

From here, head up the road back to the crossroads and turn right down to the car park at Holl resorvoir.

Sadly, no pubs to recommend on this walk, however once you are back in the car you can decide whether you fancy taking a trip to the coast for a well-deserved serving of fresh fish and chips!

Last week we held a conference aimed at growing the use of geographic information in mainstream business – Location 2012. It was incredibly well attended by over 200 delegates and supported by 25 partner organisations who were able to use the opportunity to showcase their latest products and services.

Given the title ’Profit from mapping and location data’, the event focused on how businesses could benefit from location data in making more streamlined business decisions and how making changes linked to geographic information could improve efficiency.

James Brayshaw, Director of Sales and Market Development at Ordnance Survey kicked off by explaining a little about Ordnance Survey and how our data underpins so much in the economy (estimated to be a £100 billion) and how our database contains 460 million features and is updated 5000 times a day. Given everything happens somewhere, there’s a good chance we know where it is!

We started the day with a bit of future gazing courtesy of Ian Pearson (Twitter’s @timeguide) who had some interesting views on the role of technology. He predicted that augmented reality will become big business and explained how in the future we’ll all be wearing contact lenses which allow us to see whatever we like, might have tattoos bearing QR codes and will be wearing jewellery with hidden electronic devices as technology continues to reduce in size!

Other speakers included Paul Thomas from Experian who explained how their business uses geographic information and how in the retail and online shopping environment, location information influences advertising and marketing methods used to target customers, drive the buying decision and influence where marketing spend was targeted. His example showing the many ways in which they influence a customer buying shoes will forever be my excuse as to just why I have so many pairs!!

Chris Pendleton, the senior programme manager lead for Bing Maps explained how they created the Bing Maps Geospatial platform and were ramping up activity. He predicted that increasing numbers of digital touchpoints would allow companies to target special offers and deals direct to where you are at any specific moment depending on your locations and your spending patterns!

Overall the day provided an interesting introduction to the possibilities of geographic information and provided lots of ideas as to how companies could make use of the technologies available through our partners.

If you’d like more information or get hold of the slides, please contact john.cartledge@ordnancesurvey.co.uk

This week is Walk to Work Week, a part of the Great British Walking Challenge taking place all this month, and aims to get the nation on its feet. If you’re looking to make some changes to your lifestyle, this could be the perfect time to start. Alternatively, monitoring your activity may give you a pleasant surprise as you realise just how far you walk each week anyway!

You can take part in the week by signing up your workplace for free on the My Living Streets website. You can turn the week into a competition as you and your colleagues will be able to log your miles, minutes and steps walked and see individual as well as collective totals of miles walked, calories burnt and potential carbon dioxide savings.

The May challenge is finding out how many times we can collectively walk between John O’Groats and Land’s End. You can log all of your walking activities, whether it’s to or from s work or taking the dog for a walk.

If you haven’t been doing much walking recently, there are plenty of fun apps to try out to encourage you too – such as the free Walk4Life app from Walk England, one of our online mapping partners.

The app lets you record how far you walk, and builds up a record of your daily and weekly miles on your own personal profile. You can simply enjoy seeing the miles build up, or you can sign up to a challenge and see how quickly you can reach your target.

There are also pedometer apps which you can download to count the steps you take.

If you’re already getting active – what walking apps do you recommend and why? Let us know on the blog.

Some of the Ordnance Survey team when Britain from the Air debuted in Bath (image courtesy of RGS-IBG)

The fantastic outdoor exhibition, Britain from the Air, has recently found a new home on its national tour in Chatham, Kent.

Organised by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and street gallery pioneers wecommunic8, and supported by Ordnance Survey, Britain from the Air has already visited Bath and Oxford. It has been seen by more than 4.5 million people since its launch by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)’s President Sir Michael Palin in 2010.

The exhibition features a stunning collection of more then 80 stunning large-scale images, taken from all around the country by Britain’s foremost aerial photographers, located on a giant, walk-on Ordnance Survey map.

Images on display include the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, London’s Canary Wharf, The Angel of the North, Tyne and Wear, Longleat Maze, Wiltshire and the Channel Tunnel at Folkestone, Redsands Sea Fort off the East Kent coast and Medway’s Great Lines Heritage Park.

The free outdoor gallery is on show in Military Road, The Paddock, Chatham High Street and inside the Pentagon Shopping Centre, offering visitors the chance to see some of Britain’s most breathtaking and thought provoking landscapes from a different angle.

For more details visit www.britainfromtheair.com  and the www.rgs.org/bfta

We had some great ideas submitted on the GeoVation Challenge ‘How can we connect communities and visitors along the Wales Coast Path? ’ – so thank you if you submitted an idea or voted or commented on one.  There were 62 ideas posted between 14 March and 2 May and 732 people registered on the GeoVation Community during that time – which is fantastic!

The next stage is for the judges to start reading all of the ideas and select a shortlist of the best of these which will be announced on 29 May. The shortlisted ideas teams will be invited  to a GeoVation Camp in Cardiff  over the weekend of 22-24 June.

You can find out who the judging panel are below:

The Judging Panel Chair is:

Andy Middleton – a social entrepreneur,designer and facilitator who helps leaders and teams in business,  government and community build resilience for sustainability. He uses ecology, psychology and action learning to help people connect what they see, know and feel to ways of doing things that are lighter on, and inspired by nature. He is Founder Director of the TYF Group, a well-established and innovative adventure, education and leadership business based in St Davids, Pembrokeshire. His imagination is caught by working on city and country-scale sustainability projects and by the creative retreat centre he’s building that overlooks islands and ocean on the western edge of Wales.

Andy will be joined by:

Angela Charlton -  Director of Ramblers Cymru and responsible for leading the charity in Wales.  Angela has over 20 years of experience in the voluntary sector, working across Wales, Shropshire and Gloucestershire. She joined Ramblers Cymru in 2008, coming from her previous role as Chief Officer with a Council for Voluntary Services where she secured a large amount of funding to support a very rural social enterprise initiative. Angela has experience in community engagement in both the rural and urban environment context.  Her previous roles cover environmental education, fundraising, project development and management, countryside management and, of course, walk-leading. She is from South Wales and has a real passion to see the people of Wales have every opportunity to flourish in a sustainable way whilst meeting the needs of the people and the environment.

Bill Oates who leads the Geography and Technology team in Welsh Government’s Knowledge and Analytical Services. His team of 20 is responsible for the acquisition, management, exploitation and dissemination of geographic data and some of their recent work includes Wales’ response to INSPIRE and the implementation of Wales’ relationship with Ordnance Survey for map supply.  Bill has  had a 15-year career in geographic information, but before getting his first real job he spent a year trying to get a start-up ‘dot.com’ company off the ground. He is  looking forward to working with GeoVation participants and hopefully making a contribution to their success.

Bryan Forbes – Technology Strategy Board SBRI Account Manager.  As an SBRI Account Manager, Bryan is responsible for promoting the use of the SBRI process to find innovative solutions to significant public sector challenges. This includes developing and managing technology innovation competitions with government departments and other public sector agencies. Bryan joined the Technology Strategy Board in 2009 and has a background in the IT industry where he has had extensive experience in sales, business development and account management.

John Carpenter is Head of Product Management at Ordnance Survey. John’s team is responsible for the life-cycle management of the whole Ordnance Survey product range, working with Product Propositions and Product Development to ensure that the portfolio is evolving to meet the changing market. John joined Ordnance Survey from the financial services industry in 2006, where he managed a number of business-to-business product groups.

Peter Francombe who is currently the Strategy Manager on Visit Wales’, Digital Tourism Business Programme. He is responsible for managing a team to champion within the tourism industry in Wales, enthusiasm for, knowledge of and engagement with ICT business innovations. Prior to this Peter had clocked up over 18 years experience in the Welsh Government’s Technology & Innovation Department. With various roles supporting technology businesses throughout ‘new product development life cycle’ he was most recently responsible for developing an innovative and proactive approach to commercialising their ideas in line with the open innovation model. Slotted between his years in new product development Peter also spent two years as the Ryder Cup IT Project Manager.