Oh goody, Rod Stewart has popped in for a chat.
I must admit I usually miss answering a call on my mobile and have to ring back unless it’s a promotional call from the mobile or energy provider who also send a text as well. The battery doesn’t last long either as it iis several years old now.
We used to get a lot of dodgy calls on the landline so left it to a recorded message.
I find sending and receiving texts or emails more efficient as you can say what you want to know and then read the reply. I’ve never tried Whatsapp yet.
It costs me an arm and a leg to have a landline and broadband with British Telecom, but I only use the internet while sat comfy at home on my laptop, none of that fiddling about with touch screens that have mind of their own. When I’m out and about my mobile is just there for emergencies and lives in my pocket or rucksack. It’s small and folds up, so it will handle some stick like inclement weather and being slung into the back of the car. For navigation, my vehicle has a built in sat nav, but I prefer maps. I have found the sat nav useful on rare occasions. However, I could probably navigate to any town or city in England or Wales from memory.
I do have a smartphone, I only use it to access my drone camera and just stick a tenner on the sim when the weather is suitable for flying. I have also buggered about with it, but I find the enormous amount of time it takes to do anything useful (downloading apps etc) on it is wasted and I could have made better use of my time like painting the shed or something.
So I find smartphones completely superfluous and will miss the landline phone when it’s finally become extinct, like so many other useful things that have been replaced with other things that are so complex and complicated. We are being thrust into this gadget filled techno world whether we like it or not.
I don’t make many phone calls - neither on my landline nor on my mobile - I rarely need to make a phone call and people hardly ever phone me.
I still have a landline because I need one for my Broadband where I live - and the landline does not cost me any extra and I can make calls for up to an hour for free - and I also have unlimited minutes on my mobile phone package - but I still hardly ever make phone calls.
Apart from work communications, I never did make many phone calls.
We never had telephones in homes when I was a kid and I never got into the habit of phoning people instead of writing to them.
I always found it too expensive in the old days, when we were charged per minute for landline phone calls.
In the very old days, I mostly communicated with my family and friends by letter or by visiting in person. I rarely contacted anyone by phone.
After the Internet and emails became available, I liked using email instead of the slower and more expensive postal service - though I still wrote long chatty letters to friends and family who were far away - and still do occasionally - (though much less now that the postal services have been cut so much, and are so expensive and less convenient.)
Nowadays, for quick messages, I find it easier to exchange texts and WhatsApp messages. If it’s a lengthier message, I use email.
It often works better for me and my contacts if I can send the info when it’s convenient to me and the recipient can open and read it when it’s convenient to them.
It’s useful to have a written record of the communication, especially when we are arranging meet-ups or trips away, instead of relying on the memory of a phone conversation,
If my friends or family and I just want to have a chat, we may occasionally Phone each other but it is very rare - we are much more likely to have a chat via a video-type call on WhatsApp or Facetime, so we can see each other while we chat. It feels much more natural - the next best thing to meeting up in person.
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Good post Boot, and it echos much of my phone use over the years.
I spent the best part of my life hurtling around the moors and wild places, and in the early days (eighties) I had a phone card and would call Mrs Fox from a phonebox. I did spend many an hour talking on the landline to my bessy mate. We met on a dark night miles from anywhere during a 24 hour event out on the hills of Derbyshire. The majority of my competitive fell runs and marathons were with Jim, although we never ran together but were strongly competitive with each other. We planned our adventures on the phone and did the fine tuning down the pub. Strangely, after twenty years of watching each others backs, we very rarely contact each other now…
It appears to me that these days smartphones are just high spec cameras and video recorders that you can use to text and talk to people…I wonder if they would be as popular if they never had a camera.
We use WhatsApp. I’ve got the phone coupled to the computer so I can do the reading and writing using the big screen and proper keyboard.
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I don’t use WhatsApp Mart (I don’t even know what that is 
) But I love emailing when I need to contact friends or relatives, and I use my laptop with a proper keyboard. The diddy touchscreen keyboards on smartphones were just not made for old doddering fingers.
I don’t have any problems with having a smart phone, we use WhatsApp as a means of communication for one of my jobs and it’s great for chatting to relatives in Scotland.
The thing with internet technology on a social level is that I make sure that it serves me and not the other way around if that makes sense.
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I was drawn into using WhatsApp by the family. They all like to use it. I’m not good with smartphone screens either, hence installing the WhatsApp app on the computer and coupling to the phone. Not so bad to use then.
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That may be the only thing you use your smartphone for but I have found a myriad more uses for mine.
Like you, I spend a good part of my time travelling in wild places - or, at least, places far from home - and my journeys away from home often take me a long way from home for months at a time, so I need a mobile communication device which also does all the things a home computer can do.
I don’t want to be burdened with a heavy laptop computer on my travels, so a smartphone is ideal.
Whether I’m out hiking, cruising along the English/Welsh canal network or yacht sailing in the Med, I find my smartphone is invaluable for much more than texting or taking photos.
There have been times in the Med when we would have really struggled to find information we needed if we didn’t have access to the internet to check weather, make travel plans, book moorings, find nearest fuel stations, nearest shops, best restaurants, book accommodation and flights home etc etc etc.
Then there’s the need to locate spare parts and services for our boat, work out what the spare parts we need are called in Greek, and use the map facility for locating the exact spot of some tiny workshop in a small town - find timetables for ferries, buses etc when we need them.
Then there was the time we were stranded in a small, remote harbour and needed a local engineer to fix an engine problem we didn’t have the tools to do ourselves - he didn’t speak any English, we didn’t speak Greek fluently enough to have a conversation about blown gasket seals and pressure tests for fractures in the engine block.
Our smartphone enabled us to have a conversation via “Google translate” to sort all this stuff out. - and that smartphone camera is a godsend when you’re trying to explain to someone who does not speak your language what the spare part you don’t know the name for looks like!
So, yeah, I use my smartphone for texting and taking photos … and so much more!
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You make some very good points Boot, and it sounds like a perfect solution to your lifestyle.
However, Being out on a lonely windswept moor miles from anywhere I would never trust an electronic navigation system. Flat battery, no coverage, failure of equipment etc, so for this reason I would always put my trust in map and compass.
I don’t have a smartphone other than for my drone camera, and the ships or boats I frequent are cruise liners where my laptop works just fine, for a small fee of course…On land based holidays I take my camera and download the pictures to my laptop when I return to the hotel. I then usually send a report with photos to the forum…As demonstrated on ‘Bobs Bits’…Although I think some of the photos have expired.
You raise a very good point which I had completely forgotten.
In the 1960s when I left school I was an apprentice with the GPO Telephones and one of the jobs I learned was “Planning”. I can’t remember the exact figures but the number of households in the UK with a phone was tiny. Even worse the planning fill for the GPO was absurdly small, something like one pair for 10 houses, hence the shared service (two subs on one line - you pressed a button to connect your line)
When I went to Australia in the mid 1960s I was amazed to find that just about every household had a phone including flat dwellers even boarding houses would have a red phone (privately owned pay phone) in the hallway. The Australian (then) PMG allowed one pair per house and fellow workers thought that I was joking when I told them about shared service.
Australia must be one of the few countries with plenty of street call boxes too, it wasn’t worth collecting the money so calls from them are free.
Totally agree.
I always check my walking route via Ord Survey Map before setting off and take my map and compass with me - but I also take my GPS and mobile phone as back-up. Your map and compass can’t call emergency services if something drastic happens. One can never have too many back up plans! 
Same goes for sailing - you need proper navigation charts and knowledge of how to plot a sailing course - and we always check the charts to plot our routes and use official maritime weather reports before setting off - but we also use internet wind & weather reports and if we have a GPS SatNav on board, we are not too sniffy to use that too - whether you’re walking or sailing, you can never have too many back-up options!
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What one earth do you need a map and compass in Britain for? You are never more than 10 minutes walk from Tescos. 
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I think U.K. lagged well behind some other countries in both telephone services and broadband / internet services when they were first introduced.
I remember when some of my family from Canada came to visit in the 1990s - my Canadian sister-in-law and her children didn’t realise that Brits were charged per minute for internet “dial-up services” because they had totally different pricing structures for internet services. Their service gave them unlimited access. They were mortified when they discovered they had been racking up our phone bill by spending so long online!
Fast forward 30 years and lots of areas in Britain are still relying on those old copper telephone wires for internet connections and telephone.
Haha! I’m sure you’ve got used to the vast distances between towns in Australia but if you think everywhere in Britain is only 10 minutes away from the shops, maybe you’ve been away from U.K. too long! - Come back and visit us in Yorkshire and we’ll show you some lovely Tesco-free countryside - or you can travel up to the wilds of Scotland! 
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Yeah, but it is not as if you can actually get lost, just keep walking and you are bound to come to a road, let’s face it there is nowhere more than about 100km from the coast for example.
I follow a bloke on YouTube called “Kent Survival” he goes camping and his biggest problem is keeping dry not dying of thirst or hunger.
Sound procedures … 
OS agrees:
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Terrific, thanks for sharing that link Omah! I’ve just downloaded the OS locate app onto my phone and I’m having a little tinker with it over my flat white. I would defo take out a Silva compass too
Belt and braces!
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