What I did on my holidays, 2014 edition - the Amalfi Coast
This was a one-week trip organised by Exodus and based in the Hotel Due Torri in Bomerano, a small town on the edge of a gorge in the Agerola area of Italy, just north of the Amalfi coast. I've posted a few trips like this in the past. The Picos de Europa trek is still the toughest I've done, and this one is considerably fewer miles, and much less ascent; three of the days have a net descent of around 600m, and one day is less than three miles. Mind you, those miles do go around the crater of Vesuvius, including a short foray just inside the crater to view a hot spot where the earth is around 40C and steam vents from a cave. Some parts are a bit scrambly over limestone which would be treacherous in the rain, some bits are steps. Make that quite a lot of bits are steps; the area is so steep in places that stone or concrete staircases cutting between hairpin bends on roads are common.
I have GPS tracks for all the days' walks, and you can download them as Google Earth .kmz files from here. This year I used a Garmin Fenix, which has strengths and weaknesses compared with the 310xt I've used in the past, which I'll cover in detail below.
Here's a rendering of all the walks except Vesuvius (which is about 20 miles away). Click on any of the images to see larger versions.
Maps for the individual days are below the break.
Day 1 was a loop from Bomerano to Monte Tre Calli, measuring 6.25 miles with 485m of ascent.
Day 2 went from Bomerano to Amalfi, covering 5.6 miles with a net descent of 600m, but doing a couple of hundred metres of ascent along the way.
Day 3 was the loop around the crater of Vesuvius, two and a half miles with an ascent of 300m. This shorter walk followed a morning in Pompeii. It rained on Pompeii, but the weather was perfect for Vesuvius.
Day 4 was a rest day, which we spent visiting Herculaneum and Ravello. Day 5 went from San Lazzaro to Amalfi, coming in from the north of the town rather than the west as on day 2. Again, this was 5.9 miles with a net descent of over 600m, climbing about 200m en route.(This is the blue track on the overview map above). This went via some waterfalls and a long valley where the Amalfi papermill industry used to be based; the buildings are mainly derelict and roofless now.
Finally, Day 6 was 7.9 miles from Bomerano to Positano, via a local cheese factory (though "factory" probably gives the wrong impression of a three-person company producing flor de latti for the local market). The route mainly lay along the Route of the Gods via Nocelle and Montepertuso, with a net descent of about 600m, two-thirds of that in the last mile into Positano, mainly via steps. A few short steep ascents over limestone gave us a hundred metres or so of ascent along the way.
Here are the elevations:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 6. This is reconstructed from elevation maps, not recorded by the Fenix. The spikes are where the recorded route has wandered to the side of the true route when the route runs along a contour line across a steep slope. Barometry is definitely the way to go...
And here are contour/terrain plots of the routes.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 6
A few words about the differences between the Fenix and the 310xt. The pros of the Fenix include being able to pull the data off and download ephemeris data via Bluetooth to a mobile phone, being able to use it as a normal watch between walks, and having a barometric altimeter for more precise altitude measurements (which is a particular strength in mountain regions where GPS measurements can be quite inaccurate when ridges and trees block much of the sky). The cons include somewhat shorter battery life (quoted as 15 hours rather than 20), which wasn't a problem for this trip, and GPS performance which degrades faster than the 310xt in difficult conditions. I hit a third snag, somewhere between a bug and user error; you can calibrate the altimeter either manually or automatically from the GPS. It turns out that if you do it manually, you must do it after the GPS is on, otherwise, every time you stop and start the timer, the altitude resets to whatever it was at the start of your workout. This came to light when it told me Amalfi beach was at 439m. This may get its own post when I've checked it a bit more carefully.
For most of my use the GPS performance is fine, but switchback routes under heavy tree cover lose a few percent of distance. On this trip, I needed to adjust the GPS track where it had gone over 100m out on 3 days, all in very difficult areas such as heavily wooded gorges or descending narrow, steep walled stairways between 3-storey buildings or close to tall rock faces. On the Picos trip, I needed to adjust two tracks by similar amounts for similar reasons (gorges with much less tree cover), so I'm not convinced that the Fenix is really doing so much worse. That said, Garmin say they are working on the Fenix 2 GPS performance, and that's very similar hardware, so maybe there are improvements to come still.
GPS tracks were tidied up in Sporttracks, which I also used to produce the elevation plots and contour maps (the map is provided by the Apply Routes plugin). 3D renders were produced in Google Earth using kml files exported from Sporttracks. Since I last commented on ST here, the price has gone up considerably, and they have introduced an online version with an annual subscription which syncs with the PC app. The limited free version is still available.
I have GPS tracks for all the days' walks, and you can download them as Google Earth .kmz files from here. This year I used a Garmin Fenix, which has strengths and weaknesses compared with the 310xt I've used in the past, which I'll cover in detail below.
Here's a rendering of all the walks except Vesuvius (which is about 20 miles away). Click on any of the images to see larger versions.
Day 1 was a loop from Bomerano to Monte Tre Calli, measuring 6.25 miles with 485m of ascent.
Day 4 was a rest day, which we spent visiting Herculaneum and Ravello. Day 5 went from San Lazzaro to Amalfi, coming in from the north of the town rather than the west as on day 2. Again, this was 5.9 miles with a net descent of over 600m, climbing about 200m en route.(This is the blue track on the overview map above). This went via some waterfalls and a long valley where the Amalfi papermill industry used to be based; the buildings are mainly derelict and roofless now.
Finally, Day 6 was 7.9 miles from Bomerano to Positano, via a local cheese factory (though "factory" probably gives the wrong impression of a three-person company producing flor de latti for the local market). The route mainly lay along the Route of the Gods via Nocelle and Montepertuso, with a net descent of about 600m, two-thirds of that in the last mile into Positano, mainly via steps. A few short steep ascents over limestone gave us a hundred metres or so of ascent along the way.
Day 1
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 6
A few words about the differences between the Fenix and the 310xt. The pros of the Fenix include being able to pull the data off and download ephemeris data via Bluetooth to a mobile phone, being able to use it as a normal watch between walks, and having a barometric altimeter for more precise altitude measurements (which is a particular strength in mountain regions where GPS measurements can be quite inaccurate when ridges and trees block much of the sky). The cons include somewhat shorter battery life (quoted as 15 hours rather than 20), which wasn't a problem for this trip, and GPS performance which degrades faster than the 310xt in difficult conditions. I hit a third snag, somewhere between a bug and user error; you can calibrate the altimeter either manually or automatically from the GPS. It turns out that if you do it manually, you must do it after the GPS is on, otherwise, every time you stop and start the timer, the altitude resets to whatever it was at the start of your workout. This came to light when it told me Amalfi beach was at 439m. This may get its own post when I've checked it a bit more carefully.
For most of my use the GPS performance is fine, but switchback routes under heavy tree cover lose a few percent of distance. On this trip, I needed to adjust the GPS track where it had gone over 100m out on 3 days, all in very difficult areas such as heavily wooded gorges or descending narrow, steep walled stairways between 3-storey buildings or close to tall rock faces. On the Picos trip, I needed to adjust two tracks by similar amounts for similar reasons (gorges with much less tree cover), so I'm not convinced that the Fenix is really doing so much worse. That said, Garmin say they are working on the Fenix 2 GPS performance, and that's very similar hardware, so maybe there are improvements to come still.
GPS tracks were tidied up in Sporttracks, which I also used to produce the elevation plots and contour maps (the map is provided by the Apply Routes plugin). 3D renders were produced in Google Earth using kml files exported from Sporttracks. Since I last commented on ST here, the price has gone up considerably, and they have introduced an online version with an annual subscription which syncs with the PC app. The limited free version is still available.
Absolutely brilliant, thanks!
ReplyDelete