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Ingress Walks – A 12km path to Level 13

Byrichard

I stopped playing Ingress a few years ago because of how much time it requires. I have started going on Ingress walks again – a 12km path to level 13 in yesterday’s case, because I’m combining the daily walk that I would do anyway, with listening to podcasts and audiobooks, anyway.


By walking and listening to audiobooks and podcasts I am constantly learning about new things. Recently I’ve been listening to current affairs podcasts, I listened to 13 minutes to the moon, I listened to podcasts about the Swiss Watch Industry and more. Every walk is a journey in learning. I also learn about the fifty objects that made the world and more.



I also listen to books when I walk. These aren’t the most inspiring of books but four of them were free, as part of the books I get by being an audible member via Audible originals. Every walk I go on is an opportunity to learn, without feeling that I am not as productive as I could be.


According to my blog stats, I should have lead with writing about the game Ingress, which I took a break from for years, because of how much time it takes to level up, especially when you live in the countryside.


Luckily as time has progressed so has the ability to suggest and have new portals approved. A 12-kilometre walk had three or four portals. Now it has twenty or thirty. This means that during a walk in the countryside it is worth playing Ingress. Going to a polluted city is no longer required. Even country bumpkins like me can play and progress.


By having portals in the countryside it also opens up the prospect of Ingress bike rides. Last week I cycled from Nyon to Rolle, and from Rolle I went up into the vineyards and I destroyed and captured portals. My health benefited because it was a 40km bike ride with four hundred meters of climbing in between vineyards and some of these climbs are steep.


That’s where you see that cycling in Spain has its advantages. I cycled up steep inclines without suffering or worrying I wouldn’t make it. I also cycled up those steep inclines clipped in. I don’t feel comfortable with cycling up steep hills when clipped in because I’m afraid that if I lose power in my legs I will lose forward momentum, not be able to unclip and fall.


Having said this the swiss hills are nothing compared to the Cumbre Del Sol climb. As you cycle up from Mercadona there is one bit of road that is so steep that you can’t start up again. I know because I made the mistake of stopping there and had to walk a hundred meters or so before I found a portion flat enough to start up again.


In Switzerland, you almost never find such gradients on roads, for the simple reason that it snows and water freezes. Snowploughs and other machines need to go up and down Swiss roads.


The graph shows my Ingress progression from 2015 to today.


To get to level 13 I participated in an Ingress Saturday for the first time in years and I participated in two fielding events, to get one of the medals I was lacking the first time, and for the Didact Field Challenge medal currently taking place.


This month I visited 735 unique portals, discovered one portal, collected 4.7 million XM, walked 117 kilometres (low because most of my walking is without playing ingress) and more. I could bore you with the stats but I’d bore myself too. I also spent three weeks in Geneva as part of a favour for a friend so during my daily walks I got back in the habit of playing Ingress.


I don’t make time to play Ingress. I take advantage that my walks and bike rides take me by Ingress portals and play. By combining Ingress with cycling I go down many more roads than I would otherwise go down. I explore villages that I have no reason to stop in. I treat cycling as a journey, rather than a challenge to get segment personal records. I slow down., to experience the locations. It results in me having a more relaxed bike ride.


Ingress walks are also interesting because local people, who know about features that could be portals suggest them, and as a result, we see a portal off to the side of where we’re going, and we investigate. We capture the portal but we also increase our mental map of the area where we are walking.


Ingress, for a while, was a game for people who lived in town and cities. If you lived in the countryside you had to make time to play. Today Ingress can be played in short bursts and yield better results. It has been from a “chronophage” (waste of time/time consuming)activity, as french speakers would call it, to being, for lack of a better word, integral to our daily activities.


The Return on Investment of time, and distance traveled, to play Ingress, even in the countryside has decreased to the point where it is feasible to level up, without devoting half a day. One hour yields the same result.

A Ten Kilometre Sunday Ingress Walk
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A Ten Kilometre Sunday Ingress Walk

Byrichard

I was going to take the scooter but it was stuck by three SUVs so I had no option but to lazily give up and go on a 10 kilometre Sunday Ingress walk. I couldn’t be bothered running up to the second floor, getting the car keys, moving the car, getting the scooter out and then moving the car back. This is especially true since it’s going to rain tomorrow.


I do have the goal of having at least one day a week without using an internal combustion engine so by the neighbours each having jeeps/SUVs I reduced my own carbon footprint. Days without internal combustion are always good.


Ingress Screengrab of missions.


My goal was to complete the Nyon by night set of missions. It’s the top line in the screengrab above. It’s a quick set of missions to complete with just a hack but portal for six portals. As the servers were not acting up or slow the time it took to do the walk was enough to complete the six missions. In the process, I captured a few portals and established a few more fields over the city.


While on this walk I listened to the You’re Dead to Me podcast by the BBC. It’s a podcast that explores history in a light-hearted manner. It has a comedian, an expert on the topic of the episode and the presenter. In the episode I listened to they were discussing Harriet Tubman, It’s the little brother of the In Our Time Podcast.





When I was playing Ingress a few years ago I didn’t track the walk with a GPS. I tracked it for this walk. You see that rather than be a large circular hike without overlaps you have the opposite. You see that I walked over certain streets in Nyon two or three times. You also see that there are thorns where I walk to the right or left of my course to get a portal or other.



It’s especially around the Centre of Nyon that you see that I walk through many more streets than usual. On a normal walk, I’d walk from A to B choosing the most direct route. In this case, I go up and down certain streets two or three times.


If you do this without trying to complete a mission it will be even more chaotic as you walk from portal to portal to hack, capture, up, field or other.


During the lull between summer sports and winter sports Ingress is a good way for some people to get out and be physically active without necessarily driving for hours.

An Ingress Photo Walk Before The Rain
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An Ingress Photo Walk Before The Rain

Byrichard

Today I went for an Ingress Photo Walk before the rain and I eventually did have to go home because the phone was starting to get wet and there was no urgency to continue playing the game and walking.


I did spot a few things that were slightly out of the ordinary. The first thing was the mushroom beneath. I have spotted a few of these but this one did not have a bite taken out of it. They’re large and flat and you can see the corrugation, or whatever the correct term is, beneath. They have had enough moisture to grow over the last few days.


Mushroom with the Alps in the background
Mushroom with the Alps in the background


The next unusual site was this burned-out house. It appears to be fresh. I could see a ladder going to the first-floor window.


Burnt out house
Burnt out house


The next unusual sighting was fountains with the sign “fountain stopped due to lack of water. You don’t often see this type of sign but due to the lack of rain of this summer, this might not be surprising. It might also be due to a lot of water being used to extinguish the fire, but I have not checked.


Fountain without water due to lack of water
Fountain without water due to lack of water


The final and most interesting sight is this one. It takes us back in time to when rural meant agricultural. We see nice wooden doors, aged with time and reflecting a different age. We also see plenty of fresh firewood above as well as the small boxes below. I don’t know whether these were for charcoal or tools.


Without Ingress, I have cycled, walked and driven through this village plenty of times without exploring the small side streets. This time I did and I spotted some unusual sights. What is also of interest is that despite this village being quite small it has a lot of portals.



Initially, I thought of posting these pictures to Instagram but chose not too because I’d rather provide you with the images and their context. We need to go back to writing blog posts and sharing content from our own websites.

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Ingress By Bike

Byrichard

Ingress by bike is good when you’re in the countryside because it allows you to travel between villages faster than if you were walking and without the carbon footprint of taking the car or a scooter with an internal combustion engine. It also allows you to stop anywhere.


Distance Covered


In two hours I travelled about 30 km, which by ordinary cycling standards is slow. I like to cover that distance in about an hour and a half or less. I was able to cover at least six to eight villages and visit portals that I would not overwise visit.


New Portal Spotting


During the bike ride I noticed that there were some unmarked portal opportunities. I saw some “borne kilometrique” and border markers that were not listed. The border markers are old stone sculptures where you see VD on one side and FR on the other. In this context FR stands for France, not Fribourg. They’re spaced out regularly enough to be justified as portals.


Undulating Terrain


The landscape here isn’t flat so if you’re cycling to play Ingress you sometimes visit portals that are at the bottom of troughs or other hills. You also need to cycle upwards as much as you cycle downwards. As a result it does promote a healthy afternoon of physical exercise. When you sprint between portals you’re exerting yourself more than if you were looking down at your phone while walking.


Quadlock holder


if you’re playing ingress on a bike holding the phone in your hand is dangerous. That’s why it makes sense to use something like the quadlock bike mount. It’s easy to install on your bike and when you’re playing ingress you clip the phone on, and when you finish it you remove the phone in seconds.


In the past when I’ve played ingress I kept the phone in my pocket and I had to stop to see if I was close to the next portal or if I wanted to navigate. In this case you’re using the Ingress app rather than a cycling app and you spot the field lines and head towards the portal that you either want to capture or link from.


All in all this is a nice way of going for a bike ride somewhere familiar without getting bored by the routine or the 30th time down the same road. It’s a nice way of passing an afternoon.