To be fair Mel, the original question was simply how do people measure and what is it they measure? It sort of drifted from there. I'm sorry i referred to it as a 1000 mile challenge thread in later posts - that was me seeing it as a rollover from previous years and getting carried away.
My point is that any mileage list invites comparison. I was intrigued to know what the data represented in terms of quality of walking and how accurate it was. For example, anyone with a dog could easily rack up over 700 miles a year just exercising it whereas someone else could do a few LDWs to produce a similar mileage. To me, one is a walk, the other is a Walk. Does it matter? I don't know. As I said, I only record Walks but that is self imposed rule to restrict my spreadsheet to the things that matter to me. At the end of the year I know how many trips I did, how far I went, roughly how much ascent and total time spent walking. It allows me to see how i am going as I get longer in the tooth but it is no interest to anyone else..
Richardh, my view us that if you share it, it should be a good guesstimate. If you don't you can SWAG it as much as you like.
True, and it's not like this forum to digress
I generally measure my route out on Bing maps using their measuring tool to get an idea of the mileage (kilometre-age just doesn't have the same ring to it somehow!) before a walk but what I actually log on ViewRanger is what I class as the "actual" distance I actually walked. I'm pretty happy that VR is accurate enough for me as I calibrated it against a known one mile circuit (according to my car's odometer). Comparing it against my pal's Garmin GPS when we walk together, VR is always 0.2 miles less.
My mileage aim for 2018 is to walk a mile a day (hence my goal mileage of 365), mainly to get me off my backside and out in the fresh air as it's all too easy for me to flop onto my settee after work and stay there until bedtime
I record pretty much all my walks, including walks to the shops which can range from the shortest of 1 mile to the longest of 4 miles. If I only logged my Walks (with a capital wubbleyou) then I'd probably only officially do about 20 miles a year
Logging ascent/descent, for me, is pretty pointless seeing as where I live is flat. In some places I'm even walking below sea level, but at best, a 25 foot hill over a quarter of a mile is about as challenging as it gets