Twenty Years of GPS: Where I’ve Actually Slept

March 2006. My first GPS-tagged phone photo landed in a desktop archive that nobody called "surveillance" yet. Twenty years on, that archive is 6,826 timestamped breadcrumbs across four continents and 29 countries with a confirmed overnight. Tracking was patchy until around 2012, so the overnight counts below really cover the last 15 years rather than the full twenty.

Where I slept is decided by the GPS fix closest to 04:00 in the local timezone of wherever that point sat — a border crossing at midnight lands on the correct side, and a red-eye over the Gulf counts as a night in the Gulf, not in London. Flights are in: if I wasn't asleep I was at least in my seat, and that was my bed for the night.

In the reliable window I slept roughly 4,117 nights in my own bed — about 11.3 of the 15 years. The remaining 472 were somewhere else: 288 abroad, 169 elsewhere in the UK, and 15 in transit — ferry cabins, overnight trains and red-eyes where the 04:00 fix was moving. The top overseas destinations: France (50), Malaysia (43), India (40), Thailand (22), Indonesia (21).

2016 was the peak overseas year — 91 nights away across 11 countries. 2019 was the widest — 12 distinct countries with an overnight in a single calendar year: Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czechia, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Switzerland.

Roughly 10.7× the equator, or 1.12× the distance to the Moon. Twenty years of moving around adds up.

Motorcycle Route Maps

One feature-image map per motorcycle post, oldest to newest. Tap any map to open the full trip writeup.

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Fastest Speed Per Year

The GPS also knows how fast I was moving between overnights. Taking the peak segment each year gives a rough "top speed recorded" — flights dominate travelling years, road speeds take over in quiet ones, and years the tracker barely ran only caught me walking.

Year	mph	km/h	Guess	Where
2006	27	43	road	(over water)
2007	38	61	road	South Africa
2008	393	633	flight	United Kingdom
2009	—	—	—	—
2010	3	5	walking	United Kingdom
2011	5	8	walking	United Kingdom
2012	269	433	flight	United Kingdom
2013	739	1,190	flight	United Kingdom
2014	731	1,177	flight	Ireland
2015	596	959	flight	United Kingdom
2016	735	1,183	flight	United Kingdom
2017	597	960	flight	(over water)
2018	741	1,193	flight	United Kingdom
2019	397	639	flight	Romania
2020	419	675	flight	United Kingdom
2021	90	145	road	United Kingdom
2022	616	991	flight	United Kingdom
2023	450	725	flight	United Kingdom
2024	501	807	flight	United Kingdom
2025	42	67	road	United Kingdom
2026	22	36	road	India

GPS sampled about once a minute, so peak speeds are missed. Flight figures are ground speed (jet-stream assisted). Anything above 746 mph (1,200 km/h) was binned as a bad fix. Mode is guessed from the speed band: above 186 mph (300 km/h) is a flight; in years the tracker barely ran, only walking was captured. Map dots show each year's peak — walking, road, flight.

Year by Year

Every overnight clustered into unique stops — amber for a single night, red for multi-night stays. Barbados sits alone mid-Atlantic; SE Asia is a near-continuous chain from the 2016 / 2017 trips; Europe is a blur of motorcycle routes.

Year	Nights	Home	UK other	Abroad	Transit	Countries visited
2012	246	203	28	13	2	Barbados, Italy
2013	310	290	15	3	2	France
2014	363	333	7	23	0	4 — France, Ireland … France, Ireland, Malaysia, Thailand
2015	345	285	29	29	2	8 — Austria, Belgium … Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland
2016	356	251	14	85	6	11 — Cambodia, China … Cambodia, China, France, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Vietnam
2017	357	284	17	53	3	8 — Belgium, France … Belgium, France, Ireland, Laos, Malaysia, Spain, Thailand, Vietnam
2018	361	321	28	12	0	France
2019	364	323	11	30	0	12 — Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina … Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czechia, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Switzerland
2020	364	362	2	0	0	—
2021	365	357	8	0	0	—
2022	362	359	3	0	0	—
2023	343	338	5	0	0	—
2024	307	307	0	0	0	—
2025	105	103	2	0	0	—
2026	41	1	0	40	0	India

Highest Land Places I've Been

Altitudes cross-referenced against the Copernicus DEM (110 m grid). Flight fixes are filtered out by ground speed — anything faster than 180 km/h isn't a mountain pass. Numbers on the map match the rows below. Every clustered location above 1200 m makes the cut, so the list grows naturally with each new Alpine trip — currently 27 entries; scroll for the lower-ranked ones.

Altitude (m)	Feet	Date	Where
2,814	9,232	2015-09-26	Weissflue, Arosa, Grisons, Switzerland
2,759	9,052	2015-09-25	Stilfserjoch - Passo Stelvio, Stilfs - Stelvio, Trentino – Alto Adige/Südtirol, Italy
2,759	9,052	2015-09-28	Col de l'Iseran, Bonneval-sur-Arc, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
2,741	8,993	2016-03-18	Sunrise Point 1, Cemoro Lawang, East Java, Indonesia
2,708	8,885	2015-01-10	Bochard, Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
2,461	8,074	2019-07-17	Hochtor, Rauris, Salzburg, Austria
2,430	7,972	2015-09-27	Furkastock, Realp, Uri, Switzerland
2,079	6,821	2019-07-18	Jaufenpass - Passo di Monte Giovo, St. Leonhard in Passeier - San Leonardo in Passiria, Trentino – Alto Adige/Südtirol, Italy
2,069	6,788	2015-09-27	Laghetto Moesola, Mesocco, Grisons, Switzerland
2,053	6,736	2019-07-17	Schiestlscharte, Reichenau, Carinthia, Austria
2,053	6,736	2019-07-18	Staller Sattel - Passo di Stalle, Sankt Jakob in Defereggen, Tyrol, Austria
2,038	6,686	2019-07-06	Suveniruri, Cârțișoara, Romania
2,034	6,673	2015-05-24	Babars, Huez, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
1,990	6,529	2016-09-16	Estrela, Seia, Portugal
1,935	6,348	2016-07-08	Capçalera de l'Arieja, Porta, Occitania, France
1,901	6,237	2016-07-10	la Rotonde, Bédoin, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France
1,802	5,912	2016-09-23	Pic de Bourgade, Aragnouet, Occitania, France
1,686	5,531	2019-07-07	Pasul Tărtărău, Șugag, Romania
1,656	5,433	2015-09-27	Romantica, Zermatt, Wallis, Switzerland
1,564	5,131	2016-09-15	Puerto de San Glorio, Vega de Liébana, Cantabria, Spain
1,416	4,646	2016-09-22	El Burrucalejo, Peñalén, Castile-La Mancha, Spain
1,339	4,393	2019-07-17	Šupca, Bovec, Slovenia
1,279	4,196	2015-09-29	La Vattay, Mijoux, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
1,269	4,163	2019-07-03	Parkovisko pre autobusy, District of Poprad, Region of Prešov, Slovakia
1,262	4,140	2015-09-23	Parkplatz Schießstand, St. Anton am Arlberg, Tyrol, Austria
1,257	4,124	2016-03-12	Gang Perintis, Kampung Parabo, Ciloto, West Java, Indonesia
1,244	4,081	2019-07-08	Ravna Romanija, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Visits to Parents's house

Visits to Parents's house, split by whether I slept over (overnight = 04:00-local fix within 300 m) or just dropped in (day-visit = present during the day but slept elsewhere). Zero-visit years omitted.

Year	Overnights	Day visits
2012	2	5
2013	1	16
2014	3	19
2015	4	21
2016	2	18
2017	4	18
2018	8	27
2019	5	24
2020	0	24
2021	1	25
2022	3	30
2023	1	21
2024	0	41
2025	2	8
Total	36	297

What Fed the Data

Twenty years of survival through hardware changes. The Dawarich database stamps each point with the tracker that fed it — which is how the eras below are datable, not just guessed.

2006 – ~2008

Nokia N73

Where it starts. The N73 has no GPS of its own, so early geotags came from photos stamped by a Bluetooth GPS puck paired with the phone. Patchy by design — the puck was only out of its pocket on trips worth remembering.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

2007 – ~2010

Nokia N95

The first phone I carried with GPS built in. Symbian-era apps like Sports Tracker started leaving actual tracks, not just photo breadcrumbs. Still sparse — batteries died if the GPS stayed on for more than a couple of hours.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

~2009 – 2012

Early iPhone (3G / 3GS era)

The crossover years. The iPhone had GPS, but continuous location history wasn't really a thing yet — what survives from this period is still mostly photo EXIF and occasional app logs. The reliable era only really begins once Google Location History is flipped on.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

2013 – 2025

iPhone + Google Maps Timeline

Every fix from 2013 to 2025 in the database is tagged google-maps-timeline-export — a Google Takeout dump, re-imported into Dawarich. Twelve years on a single always-on background service, through whatever iPhone was current at the time. This is where the data stops being patchy and starts being a diary.

Logo: Google (via Wikimedia Commons)

Motorcycle trips, 2015 – 2019

Garmin Zūmo 550 (on the handlebars)

Dedicated sat-nav, not part of the phone-side data — but it's the reason the Alps 2015, WAW 2017 and Eastern Europe 2019 tracks are so dense compared to the phone-only years around them. Weatherproof, glove-friendly, logs every second.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

2026 – present

Self-hosted Dawarich + OwnTracks

The current stack. OwnTracks on the phone publishes fixes straight into my own Dawarich instance at dw.elyob.com — no Google involved. First era where altitude is recorded at source (which is why every point before November 2024 had to be back-filled from the Copernicus DEM for the Highest Places table above).

Screenshot: Dawarich project (GPL-3.0)

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A few caveats. Pre-2006 is gone — no GPS at all. The strict-overnight audit yields 26 countries with a confirmed sleep; another handful are memory-backed day-trips (Andorra is the only country that counts without an overnight, per my own rule).

Twenty years is a long time for a dataset to survive a change of phone, three generations of tracker, one pandemic, and two self-hosted-database migrations. The next twenty years won't have to rely on memory.