Talking the Talk, Plotting the Walk

I've recently found some great tools for walking and running. They enable you to plot routes in your own city using Google Maps as the base. As you plot, it calculates the total distance in kilometres or miles. Once you're done, you can save your route and email the URL to fellow-walkers.

There's a number of flavours of these Google plotting web sites, but these are the ones I like the best:

• Gmaps Pedometer – simple and to the point, Gmaps lets you plot your route, see the distance and get a URL to the map for emailing or to come back to later.
• WalkJogRun – this site lets you see other user's routes in your area. It's great if you've run out of ideas and want some inspiration. You can filter by distance as well. To view a route, zoom into your area, single click on a marker and then click "View" on the popup bubble.

For both sites, be sure to click on the "Hybrid" button near the top of the map. You'll see satellite imagery as well as the street network. It's dead useful for plotting walks along unmarked paths.