I’ve recently started a Wikivoyage article for this trail. I noticed that the trail is split up into sections that don’t align with stages as they are commonly described (see here for an example: The GR10 route: Everything you need to know | Cicerone Press)
Unlike the Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne and Senda Pirenaica, which are split up into sections that can be used for creating a hiking guide. In fact, most relations for hiking trails are either split up into meaningful sections, or not split up at all (i.e., one relation).
I was wondering if it would be alright to change this, or if someone could lend a hand?
Hi! you will get very few responses if you post such a precise question (geographically and technically) with such vague tags. It’s by pure chance that I noticed the title and was curious enough. Also, please be aware that the French OSM crowd does not speak/read/write English much and tends to stick to the French-speaking forum.
It is alright if you change the sections in a route relation, provided that you do not break the continuity of the route, that you maintain the proper ordering of members in relations, that you ensure that the tags remain consistent, and that you respect the splitting points where several routes join.
Still, do not expect your favorite set of sections to be maintained over time by other mappers, because there is no such thing as an official or consensual set of stages for this type of route. Most long routes, at least in France, are split in sections for pure technical reasons and not to represent stages; there have been discussions about how to represent stages whenever an official set exists, but I am not aware of a solution for this so far.
Hey, thanks for the message! I couldn’t find any information on official stages either, so I expected as much. I’ll improve the tags for my next question.
The Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne does not have any official way marking. It travels over different sections of the Senda Pirenaica and La traversée des Pyrénées. If the La traversée des Pyrénées trail were split up into different sections, those could be included in the Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne trail. It would probably decrease maintenance for this trail overall, and would make It a lot easier to see where these trails coincide.
At the moment, these trails all have separate relations, even if this doesn’t accurately represent reality.
Oh yes, the relations represent a very real situation
Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne (or Haute Route Pyrénéenne) is an institution, one of its own kind. It exists only through a guide, but one that is so well known that the French hiking federation advertises it.
HRP is not for the faint of heart. If you create confusion with the more tame Traversée des Pyrénées you will send people to their death
I’m not trying to create confusion between the trails. Rather, I think it would be helpful if the sections of the La traversée des Pyrénées and Senda Pirenaica that are also part of the Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne were mapped accordingly. In other words, where these trails overlap, it might make more sense for the Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne relation to include those existing relations as parts, instead of creating a separate relation for the same segments.
In order to make that happen, La traversée des Pyrénées would need to have different segments though.
Locally to me, I’ve split National Trails into parts that allow the bits that are also part of other trails to be added to them. If, separately to that, there is some “official division” of the trails it’s also OK to do that - you can have “day 2 part 1” and “day 2 part 2” or similar.
They don’t show up well within iD, but many LDPs have several levels of superrelation / superroute.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. If there are common sections by construction (rather than by coincidence, subject to change) yes it would make sense to create common sections. We have that for different versions of Camino de Santiago, for instance. But, as @SomeoneElse mentioned, it will make the management of HRP stages more complex.
No problem, and thank you for sharing your perspective! In general, I’m against anything that makes trail management more complicated.
There’s an inherent tension between ease of maintenance and user value. As a user, I want to be able to download a KML file and head straight out for a hike. It’s especially helpful if that KML includes meaningful stage divisions.
The same principle applies to creating hiking guides based on OpenStreetMap (Wikivoyage).
I’m not sure whether the parts of trail that overlap are coincidental or purposeful. I’ll do some research to find out. If it does make it more difficult to maintain, in this case, it could be better to simply split up La traversée des Pyrénées into meaningful sections, and not to do any “stage disambiguation”, i.e. adding segments of the other two trails into the HRP relation.
As an aside here:
Of all of the long distance trails covered on Wikivoyage, the only other trail that doesn’t have a “logical” splitting of sections from the purpose of a user (either creating a hiking guide, or using the trail from Waymarked Trails) is the Appalachian Trail.
