Useful POIs in an alpine village

I am starting to plan my summer trip to Switzerland, mainly spent hiking from alpine villages. I will obviously be recording tracks of any hikes that are not already in OSM, but the mapping of trails seems pretty advanced by now. So I would like to do some useful POI mapping. Which brings up the question: Which POIs are really useful, and how intensely should a small village be mapped?

My feeling is that alpine villages are mapped more for the convenience of visitors than locals; locals know their village. So I always map the post office, bigger food stores (but not every store that sells cheese and fruits, and not the boulangeries/pâtisseries), the real estate offices (I rent apartments, so my first stop is always the real estate office to get the keys :)) and banks and their bankomats (very important!!). Also pharmacies and tourist offices. I occasionally map the bigger hotels, but not restaurants.

Contrast these two neighboring villages in the Val d’Anniviers: St-Luc and Zinal. It seems to me that St-Luc would benefit from a few more POIs, but also that Zinal seems over-mapped.

Many thanks to those whose work has made the Kowoma map so useful for the vacationing hiker!.

I suspect that you are more likely to get an answer on the talk-ch mailing list. The forum tends to be very quite.

Simon

Zinal does not lool over-mapped to me. Have a look at Andermatt

In the Val d’Annivers most people around will not be locals. The local families I know tend to have rather good local knowledge: some are reputed to be lineal descendants of refugees from Attila the Hun’s army defeated at Chalons. IIRC their knowledge tends to be of the form “I dont know why they built at place X, it avalanches every 200 years”.

Most of the villages consist of tourist accommodation or second homes. I would therefore try and map any hotels, restaurants & bars. Cafes are useful for a wet day, or for coffee and cake at the end of a long one. Group accommodation is often plentiful in Swiss alpine villages and worth mapping. The sheer number of rent-able apartments means that mapping this is roughly the same as doing all the addresses. The tourist office will be an important source of information, and for finding holiday apartments.

I think all bus stops are now in, but I’m not sure how extensively the post bus network is mapped: this is a hugely useful resource for hikers.

Sporting facilities, ostensibly built for tourists, are often very heavily used by locals at all times of year. I remember wandering around Chateaux D’Oex one November looking for somewhere to eat, but it was very quite. I walked back to the station and passed the ice rink which was crammed with locals of all ages and had a very good Menu de Jour.

Pharmacies, doctors. Newsagent (will usually sell maps and a few books of local interest, I always case these places out). The town hall (may be the police point too), and schools are obviously of interest to locals. Petrol station if one exists. But most of all, a lot of the permanent residents will make their living from tourism: mapping their businesses helps them too.

Many villages will use a version of the cadastral map for showing where holiday accommodation is located: for me this represents a target level of detail to aim for.

Have a good trip.

Thanks for the advice, I will map more, rather than less.

I had not thought of this, will definitely keep it in mind. Life is not easy in the mountain valleys, and we should do what we can to help.

Can there anything be “over-mapped”? I don’t think so.
What I don’t like in Zinal are nodes with just building=yes and name=*. What is this?!?

My guess, and I emphasize that it is a guess, is that they are apartments. I did not map the area so I do not really know.

Looking at some old photos of the area, I’d agree.

building=yes on a node is perfectly valid tagging: it adds information which is not otherwise available. There is no aerial coverage of the area so drawing building outlines was probably not feasible, and I fancy housenumbers in these villages are probably allocated numerically in the order in which buildings are built throughout the commune, so I’m not sure that addresses can be added conveniently.

Of course a survey could enable this data to be enhanced: but, its certainly something some can build on.

I’ve put a FIXME tag on these nodes.

That makes it explicit and easier to pick up with Keepright etc… I do think of building on a node as an implicit fixme!