Quality of your local orienteering areas

[Angry Haggis]

Hi,

I'm carrying out a quick survey of the quality of your local orienteering areas - that is, the areas in the postcode (E.g. EH16, S10) you live in. I would be grateful if you could spend 10 seconds voting on the survey - just click one of the five options, type in the first part of your postcode and hit Submit. All answers are anonymous.

The survey is here:

http://www.surveymapper.com/response.aspx?id=119

...and you can see a live updating map with the results - you'll need to zoom in a few levels to see them.

Thanks!
AH

p.s. Your interpretation of what is meant by how "good" your local areas are, is up to you. You may love the simple street orienteering maps of your area, so rate it highly, or bemoan the fact you don't live in the Trossachs and so vote your postcode down - it's your choice!

[SeanC]

What do I do if there are no orienteering areas in my postcode? There are at least 3 in neighbouring postcodes, but I don't think they get into my postcode... though I haven't got a map of the postcode boundary.

[IanD]

Would help if you could tell us how to find postcode boundaries online. I've had a quick browse around the Royal Mail website without success.

[Karen]

Same problems as Sean and Ian

[mharky]

Why are you doing the survey by post-code? The area covered by these is so small, the majority of city based post-codes will contain either no areas, a few crappy parks, or a big street map. How many people consider their "local area" to only be their post-code? Peole who live in Aberdeen or Inverness won't have many good areas in their postcode, but some of the best terrain in Britain a short drive away.

[Angry Haggis]

You can find your local postcode by entering your address into this website:

http://postcode.postoffice.co.uk/portal/po/postcodefinder

If you don't have any local areas, then feel free to vote for another area - however it is tricky to find postcodes for orienteering areas, as postcodes are associated with houses which can be far away from a particularly rural map. Googling for area name and "postcode" can often reveal a postcode, for example "Inshriach postcode" reveals "PH22" in a couple of the resulting links.

If you have hunch on the postcode but want to check for sure, type it into http://oobrien.com/map/maps.php to see the BOF-registered maps near this postcode.

Mharky - good point, I thought districts/UAs would be a bit broad, i.e. the whole of the highlands would appear as one area.

[NeilC]

I just took this to be a bit of fun and so thought about the areas that were within a 30min run from my house.

[Angry Haggis]

I just took this to be a bit of fun and so thought about the areas that were within a 30min run from my house.

That's exactly the intention.

[SeanC]

Clever technology - all kinds of possibilities for location based surveys - serious or banter.

[greywolf]

In Scotland, you can find the postcode of any piece of land using a mapping tool on the Scottish Government website
http://crtb.sedsh.gov.uk/landreformp/viewer.htm

The interface is a bit clunky but handy when you don't have a specific house address to work with, and you can output maps with boundaries:

Culbinpostcodes.jpg (202.36 KiB) Viewed 8048 times

I have no idea if or where such a facility exists south of the border... but if the Scottish Government website can manage it then it can't be too difficult

[dch]

Several map websites show postcode boundaries to the level of postal areas. Although not as good as the Scottish website this level should be adequate for this purpose.

However, it is often only shown for certain scales and options. For example on streetmap.co.uk it is shown for 1:5000 or larger and on multimap.com it is shown on the Collins Bartholomew map option at the four largest scales.

[mappingmum]

... but if the Scottish Government website can manage it then it can't be too difficult

ohhh so cheeky!

[Roger]

Why are you doing the survey by post-code? The area covered by these is so small, ...

True: postcodes are small where lots of people live (and almost by definition will cover very few non-urban orienteering areas), but are huge where there's little population and there may well be lots of superb 'wilderness' terrain. In other words, the people you're asking will tend to live where the areas aren't.

Maybe the 10km x 10km grid squares would have been a better basis for this survey? (a more formal expression, perhaps, of Neil's '30-minute run')

Now if you were asking about pubs, that would be a different matter...

[Copepod]

As an aside, SAHSU (Small Area Health Statistics Unit) uses postcodes to map health outcomes. UK and Canada are the only countries (to my knowledge) that have postcodes for such small areas, and people know where they live, so location information is fairly reliable. Limitations are, as others have said, urban postcodes cover much smaller areas than rural ones, and may not coincide with eg linear power lines, which are of some concern for some health issues. But, such an approach is impossible in countries where a postcode covers a city or part of a city or state eg USA, Australia, NZ.