Conrad's comment on my last post sent my mind down a short rabbit hole wondering how long one could make a single 'circuit' route on Cannock Chase, without any repetition of paths.
I confess that I didn't put much effort into finding out, and having plotted the route shown in the map snippets below, I can immediately see how it could be made longer, although I would hesitate in heading up to Slitting Mill as I'm not familiar with the paths up there and it is home to the Mountain Bike centre.
I also failed slightly on the 'no repetition' rule as there's about 200m of repeating the same path in the opposite direction. Otherwise, the route just touches itself at several crossroads, before heading off in a different direction.
It comes in at 75km with 1400m of ascent. I reckon it could be increased by another 5-10km without much difficulty. (I couldn't fit it all on one snippet, and it would have been helpful if I'd given a bit more overlap so you could see more easily how the two snippets line up.)
Will one of us be going to try it out? 'Fraid not! We're both happy with circuits on the bits of the Chase we like the most, but it was an interesting (to me, at least) exercise all the same.
(*Not sure if it's technically possible to be 'off topic' when it's my blog and has no declared topic!)
Many people don't even try to understand or empathise with the, to them, strange pursuits of their friends and acquaintances, something I have noticed relating to my faffing about making scale models. In your example here you have a kindred spirit, a fellow map and route plotter enthusiast. I offer my admiration and congratulations.
ReplyDeleteI've just gone down another rabbit hole of searching my blog to see if I mentioned my biggest endeavour of similar route plotting, and find that it got barely a mention. In June 2020 (when time was not at a premium!) I spent days plotting, trying to find the optimum route around 'every road in the village'. The parameters were that I had to visit every 'welcome to' sign on all of the roads in and out, and visit the entirety of every road that sits within those signs. In March 2021 I revisited the route again and spent even longer plotting different versions, in the continued quest for the most efficient route. Eventually I went and ran the route, with the execution taking a tiny fraction of the time spent pondering maps and plotting.
DeleteYour may enjoy reading The Millennium Problems by Keith Devlin, especially from page 112 onwards: The Ambitious Traveling Salesman.
ReplyDeleteThe book describes "the seven great unsolved mathematical puzzles of our time" for which the solving of qualifies for a large financial prize in the USA. The problems themselves are almost impossible even to define for the layman but Devlin has good crack at it and I found the book totally absorbing.