iWalk Cornwall

The iWalk Cornwall app offers a few different ways to access points of interest along the walk.  Any information for the current direction is shown on the direction overlay on the map screen. This is shown by default for all directions on the directions screen. You can turn this on and off using the setting screen (access via "... More", "Options" then "Settings"): Geo-located points of interest are shown as markers on the map.  Some of these may be in addition to those shown within the directions. You can tap these to read about them: When we check the routes, we're constantly on the lookout for more that we can add to each of the walks so you may well find we've added a few more points of interest if you come back to do a walk again.

Over a tonne of fishing gear is abandoned in the sea every MINUTE, on average.  Work is being done to change the economics to stop gear being dumped but the sea is already full of the stuff. Every year this kills over 100,000 whales, dolphins and turtles as well as countless seabirds.  It is also estimated to be destroying around 10% of the total commercial fish stocks. You can help tackle this by keeping a lookout on your walks The Polzeath Marine Conservation Group have come up with a good idea to get people doing coastal walks to act as an Early Warning System for this “ghost gear” so it can be removed as quickly as possible before it has chance to do any more harm. If you come across a small amount of fishing gear on a beach that's safe to remove then bin it.   If you spot some that's too large to deal with yourself then take a photo and email it to sue@cornwallsealgroup.co.uk , describing where it is and giving an idea of size.

The reason is that using GPS to measure distance always over-estimates. In other words: your GPS is wrong . Why?  There is an inaccuracy of several metres in each GPS reading on consumer devices due to radio waves being slowed down in the atmosphere. image from thesciencegeek.org This is the reason that councils don't use fitness apps to drill next to gas pipes in roads and instead have people holding something resembling a flying saucer on a pole having paid tens of thousands of pounds to subscribe to error correction services which reduce the error down to centimetres.   Surely a few metres isn't very far on a walk?  No, but it IS between readings. As the measurements are taken frequently during a walk (e.g. an app might get one reading per second), the error in position is significant vs the distance you have walked in the time between readings. In a car where you are going faster or even if you are running, the error is less significant vs the distance tra

We'll be there d'reckly! The length unit of “a league” was based on the distance that a person could walk in an hour. This was eventually standardised to be 3 (English) miles. Cornwall had its own distance units: a Cornish mile was 1½ English miles, which perhaps explains why arrival was always "d'reckly". How fast do people normally walk? On the flat, 3 miles/hour is a pretty typical walking speed, although on “proper” Cornish terrain, it’s likely to be closer to 2. When I’m testing walks, I usually average around 2-2½ miles per hour which includes a little bit of time spent taking photos and figuring out how best to describe the directions. Getting tired... Where possible, the iWalk Cornwall walks are designed so that the most demanding terrain is in the first half of the walk whilst you're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and the return route is on easier terrain as you start to tire. This also has the effect of smoothing out the average speed

For dog owners, we've added to the website: a list of walks where stiles have been reported to us as OK for larger dogs a list of walks with a low chance of encountering livestock   These are also linked from the dogs page -  http://www.iwalkcornwall.co.uk/dogs.html The "dogs" section of each walk also contains more information about stiles, livestock and any dog restrictions affecting the walk or beaches that it visits. We'll gradually add more walks over time and keep them updated based on feedback so let us know how you find the stiles if you take a large dog on one of our walks that currently doesn't have any info about stiles in the "dogs" box.

If you see something on your walk and want to snap a quick photo, rather than firing up the phone's camera app, within the iWalk app you can simply tap on "..." and then "Camera" to take a quick photo. This uses functionality built into iOS and Android but it's worth noting that for some unfathomable reason, Apple and Google have chosen to make this work very slightly differently to the camera app that they also supply on the phone, bless them. On iPhones, you need to press "Use Photo" after you have taken your photo: Apple On Android, you need to press "OK" or the tick icon, depending on your phone - some form of confirmation anyway!   NB. If you press the phone's back button, the photo will NOT be saved!!! Android Note that on old versions of Android (5 and below) the photos are stored in a subfolder within the gallery.

If you haven't heard of sweatcoin, it's a digital currency unit (a bit like a bitcoin) created by a British company and is generated via an app which counts steps when you are outside (doesn't work inside). https://www.digitaltrends.com/outdoors/sweatcoin-fitness-app/ The sweatcoin app pays a rough rate of one sweatcoin for each half mile walked (0.95 sweatcoins per 1000 verified steps).  These can then be spent on products and services through their app/website. Like bitcoin this is a "cryptocurrency" and can also be converted to cash.  Currently 1 sweatcoin is only worth 5p if you cash in 20,000 of them via Paypal!  However there are plans to trade it on currency exchanges and as with bitcoin, it's quite possible that sweatcoins could appreciate in value so it's no bad thing to be an early adopter.  The sweatcoin company have just landed £4 million in investment so it all looks fairly promising. You can run the sweatcoin app in the backgro