Squadrats

Imagine a virtual grid of squares over a map. Each of these is a “tile” that’s roughly one mile square. Tiles can be collected by entering the space a tile covers using a GPS device to record the journey. The GPS file is uploaded to one site, the activity is picked up by another and your collection of tiles is calculated and displayed. The largest contiguous area of visited tiles. The largest square in which all tiles had been collected. It was an activity that led me to going to places I’d not been before. Mostly cycling. On and off road. I like exploring and I like seeing collections grow. About ten years ago I started to collect “Explorer Tiles” using Strava and VeloViewer. I was on a mission to collect every tile covering Kent, to grow my largest square and to extend overall tile coverage. I wrote a couple of posts about this back in 2016 and 2018. As time went by more and more virtual activities appeared in my Strava feed. These are activities created by using an indoor cycling…