WikiLoc: Olesa de Montserrat’s paths - Olesa de Montserrat
Olesa de Montserrat (Spain)
Olesa de Montserrat is surrounded by many mountains and, the most important one, the Montserrat Mountain. Every year many people from all around the world come to visit this zone due to their natural and cultural heritage singularity and willing to discover its history.
Wikiloc is a platform that collects thousands of natural trails from many countries. The information is recorded and given by citizens based on what they know or their experience and some advices and recommendation.
One of the aims of Olesa de Montserrat’s Council is to work to improve healthy lifestyles of our citizens. Because of that, we have worked with Wikiloc to promote natural trails of many kinds addressed to everyone (from kids and people with limited mobility to athletes).
In this project, our experts in this matter, such as geographers, have designed the best trails based on items like security and tourism interests. These routes were created on the local interactive map, that includes a diversity of important information about local interest points. Promoting the visibility of this, we found out that the first consulted website to go hiking is Wikiloc.
Because of that, our experts have done an important job translating our map into Wikiloc’s. So that everyone, from locals to outsiders that wants to visit our territory can consult the guides done on the website or the app.
Technology has allowed us to reflect the routes that are known mostly only by locals, to everyone interested on our territory. But we could not let go the possibility to lead the way and create these paths, always in mind security, nature preservation and historical interests.
On the other hand, we also have created trails inner-city that explains our history and give some additional information of our streets so that outsiders can understand our culture and learn from our culture in a comfortable way.
Regard Wikiloc, the information included there is designed from our “geoportal”, where there is a layer named “Itineraris entorn natural” that includes the information address to everyone. Also, it can be consulted affectations on our public road that are currently disturbing the normal use of this streets. Even more, future works and their timing are inserted on the map so citizens and strangers can anticipate their actions in the best possible way.
The information included on the platform is relevant because of the possibility to choose between the different difficulty level, themes and the duration of it (calculated with the kilometres and the elevation gain and loss). In this way, safety is guaranteed as mush possible.
In collaboration with local people and their knowledge of the historical paths in this area, we designed the guidelines that are reflected on the trails available to everyone.
During 2022 5.253 people have visited our profile or some of the published trails. And continuous information is exchanged with our public so that corrections and new items can be included to improve this service.
