Resources

This is a list of some of the resources used to create this web site and some other, useful things.

Google Sites - Anyone with a Google account can create a web site with this free and easy-to-use service, which is exactly what I did. It has a few limitations like you can't edit the underlying code and you can't edit a site on a mobile phone but, other than that, it's been easy to use.

Google Slides - Anyone with a Google account can create a slide presentation with this free and easy-to-use application. I use it here to present more photos on route guides as the Image Carousel option in Google Sites doesn't handle photos with different aspect ratios very well and trying to embed a Flickr album slideshow gave pretty awful results.

History

A History of the Parish of Neilston by David Pride - a very useful resource for finding out any historical information about the area. There's another, more easily searchable version here.

Portal to the Past - ERC Culture & Leisure's local history and heritage web site.

Trove.scot - a site that brings together Historic Environment Scotland's collections in one convenient place. It combines information from the Historic Environment Portal, Canmore, SCRAN, and Property in Care Collections. The original Canmore, an online catalogue of Scotland's archaeology, buildings, industrial and maritime heritage has been archived!

The Megalithic Portal - An archaeological information site.

Historical Maps

These are very useful for or identifying features in the landscape that even some locals might not know the name of.

Downloadable Guides

You can always print the routes on here to PDF easily enough and Outdooractive lets you do that as well but there are a couple of old guide books that you might find interesting here. I can't find these online anymore, which is why they're archived and available here.

Go Neilston! - Neilston Development Trust.pdf

Walking In East Renfrewshire - East Renfrewshire Council.pdf

Apps and Web Tools

Outdooractive - a comprehensive platform for hikers, mountaineers, bikers, explorers, families, and pretty much all lovers of the outdoors. It lets you plan, design and share routes and route maps and the mobile app will let you follow turn-by-turn navigation instructions.

Komoot - similar to Outdooractive with one added benefit in that it'll let you go off-track while planning a route.

Google Maps - I'd be lost without without it 😮‍💨. It'll tell where you are or how to get from there to somewhere else. It'll also let you create and save routes as GPX files.

Organic Maps- a free, mobile route planning app with turn-by-turn directions that can work offline. Very useful if your internet connection is poor or you have a limited mobile data plan. It uses data from OpenStreetMap.

brouter-de - a free, online route-planning application that will let you generate and share cycling, driving, hiking, walking and even by rail for export to GPX file.

The Hug Maps - a free, online application that will let you create routes on British OS maps and then export them as GPX files. It'll also show you GPS and OS grid ref coordinates.

Create a panorama - a very useful site for generating landscape panoramas and identifying any topographical features.

See How I Record My Walks for route-planning and recording apps used or being tried out.

Here are some worthy mentions for a few free image editing tools for Windows that I've used and am still using regularly:

IrfanView can open most image file types and can even detect when a file is incorrectly typed.
Faststone Image Viewer has very easy to use cropping and resizing tools.
paint.net is for more creative editing. It supports layers and has many adjustments and filters.

IrfanView

Faststone Image Viewer

paint.net

If you're feeling more creative and don't fancy getting into complicated photo editors like Adobe Photoshop or the GIMP, then here are a few free, online image editing applications well worth trying out.

fotor - the online photo editor is free. Yes there are premium extras available but as a basic image editor, it is pretty good.
LunaPic - A free, online image editor with loads of functionality.
Photopea - a free, online image editor that can edit Photoshop and GIMP files as well as the the standard formats.

fotor

LunaPic

Photopea

Photographs

Some of the small images on the site (brand images, public domain images, etc.) are hosted on ImgBB, a free, online image hosting service.

Currently, all of the local photographs on here are my own and are hosted on Flickr - you can view my photostream here. I might move all the images onto the Google account associated with this site...or I might not.

Lastly, me - I'm a 70-something, retired Scot that moved with my partner to Neilston in 2013 for a healthier lifestyle. I used to work in I.T. support, which accounts for my familiarity around web sites and technology. We like walking and nature stuff.

The image is of my shadow. I'm standing on a sand dune on Lossiemouth East Beach, holding the camera and waving, with the sun behind me.

If you find this site useful and want to buy me a beer or a coffee, then you can do that here.

If you have any comments, suggestions, etc., for improving the site, then you can contact me via NeilstonWalks@gmail.com

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