Running out of things to watch on Netflix and yearning more and more for the outdoors? Here are a few ways you could see out the current lockdown.

With our current quarantine lockdown, the conditions for hiking and camping getting better and better and the end of all this unfortunately not quite in sight yet, there’ll be many outdoor enthusiasts out there who’ll be just about ready to go up the wall.

To try and help, we’ve come up with a few things that might take people’s mind off things or that’ll gently scratch that itch – the I-really-need-to-get-out-in-the-hills itch.

Plan A Trip For When It’s All Over

One way of looking at things – the glass half full way – is to see this as the perfect opportunity to come up with some fun trips in the future and to really put some good planning into them.

OM editor Will Renwick, who’s preparing for a 20-day fastpacking trip this summer, says that he’s been spending a lot of his time in lockdown on Bing Maps. “It was such a revelation for me when I first discovered that there’s free and instant access to Ordnance Survey’s mapping on Bing,” he says. “I use it for all my hiking and running route inspiration now. Or just to pass the time!”

For plotting out routes, it’s komoot Will recommends turning to. “You can’t digitally mark out your route on Bing, so komoot is the best option there in my opinion,” he says. “It’s the simplest, quickest and most convenient app for it and you can use it for free.”

Plenty of inspiration over on the Cicerone website.

Another good way to find inspiration and to get a trip properly planned out is to buy yourself a good guidebook. You can gain plenty of adventure inspiration from simply browsing through publishers’ webshops. Cicerone’s site is a surefire way to get some ideas flowing, the same goes for likes of Vertebrate, Wild Things Publishing and Bradt Guides. Purchase one or two guides from them and start reading up on your post-pandemic adventure. In these difficult times, those publishers could certainly all do with our support.

Explore Virtually

If you’ve already used up your one walk, run or cycle for the day, you could always go for a virtual wander.

Numerous studies have shown the positive psychological effect that listening to recordings of natural sounds like birdsong can have and the same can also be said for visual indulgence (see this report). Fortunately nowadays there are all kinds of quirky things you can find online that could help in this regard.

One of our favourite examples is this interactive article with a video showing someone’s point of view as they walk for four days along the Australian coast between Bondi beach and Manly Beach. Those who have some time on their hands could potentially plod the whole 80km trip if they wanted, but there’s also the option to drop in at any point along the way.

Here’s a hyper-lapse of that walk. Follow the link above for the real-time version of it.

Until the Digital Age, typography was a specialized occupation. Digitization opened up typography to new generations of previously unrelated designers and lay users, and David Jury, head of graphic design at Colchester Institute in England, states that “typography is now something everybody does. As the capability to create typography has become ubiquitous, the application of principles and best practices developed over generations of skilled workers and professionals has diminished. Ironically, at a time when scientific techniques.