Pootler

Some Revisions. March 2024.  For years I used the excellent 'Viewranger' app for maps and planning trips but this disappeared into the vortex of global capitalism and re-emerged, much changed, as part of Outdooractive, a German company with international aspirations.  I have searched far and wide for a better replacement, applying three main criteria namely whether the free versions: Gave you good quality maps, preferably usable offline,  Allowed me to upload my routes and for you to access them.  Would import my detailed notes on interesting or entertaining places on the routes.  This wasn’t straightforward mostly because my needs will probably be different from yours as a user and my experience is muddied but also because I am a paying user of some of the apps and not others.  Starting at the end, my conclusion was that, compared to Viewranger, they were all inferior, imperfect and irritating.  Two major issues for me were: They want to subjugate your ideas about where you

  In 1840 Queen Victoria, the last Hanoverian monarch in Britain, proposed marriage to her cousin Franz August Karl Albert Emanuel of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. This was the Royal's family name until during World War One they decided that the optics were unhelpful and changed it to Windsor.  Initially, the Great British Public did not see Albert as a Premier League signing, but just another German wannabe, but it transpired that he was a good egg. He championed education, science, the arts and the abolition of slavery worldwide and promoted Britain's claims to pre-eminence in them through Great Exhibition, just down the road in Hyde Park. He was also a good husband, covering both state and parenting duties for Victoria when she was pregnant or off running her Empire. But in 1816 he died, aged only 42. She was distraught and for the remaining 40 years of her life, only wore black. This sounds a bit extreme to me, but it must have simplified the wardrobe choices. The Great Exhibition