Adding past trips to my map

I'm trying to decide if it would be a good idea to try to add past trips to my travel map here. On the one hand, I like the idea of having a (more) complete record, and when I come to make use of my imported Virtual Tourist tips it would be nice to be able to attach them to a trip. On the other hand, it will be quite a lot of work, and for many of them I wouldn't know the exact dates. Does the latter point matter? Can I add a trip without dates, or would I need to put something, even if inaccurate?

Has anyone else added backdated trips to the map - if so, I'd be interested in your experience and if you feel it was worthwhile?

I've added all past trips in my map - three or four at a time and it's soon done. They will list in order of time so long as you make sure any date in any part of the trip is roughly the same time as the trip took place. I think I just made sure the first departure was about right and the final arrival was about right and all the rest were 00/00/00. Check you don't put one in and it defaults to today's date, otherwise it'll list out of order.

Quoting Borisborough

I've added all past trips in my map - three or four at a time and it's soon done. They will list in order of time so long as you make sure any date in any part of the trip is roughly the same time as the trip took place. I think I just made sure the first departure was about right and the final arrival was about right and all the rest were 00/00/00. Check you don't put one in and it defaults to today's date, otherwise it'll list out of order.

Thanks, that's helpful to know. I guess I'll give it a go with some fairly recent ones and see how I get on!

You should also be able to enter dates with just the month filled in, not a specific day. So 2007-10-00 for October 2007.

I have added a few old trips, and eventually I plan on making this a complete record of my travels. I am fortunately in that I do have the exact dates for most of my trips, either from my journal or from the passport stamps (I have kept all my old passports)

I've added some of my old trips. I keep a daily journal so dates were not a problem.

If you can keep them in the correct year and possibly month, you should be fine. If not, first list them and put them in some sort of order just to help you get them added in approximately the correct order if it makes any difference to you. For the rest of us, we won't notice at all since we weren't there.

BTW, if you have the original digital photos, they should have the date taken. This only helps with digital photos of course.

I think it's much simpler and much nicer to just hang a big map on your wall and draw uge flags in any of the places u ve been. maybe a nice pic of the trip. It doesn't matter about the dates, it's the memories that matters!

Quoting Grete Howard

I have added a few old trips, and eventually I plan on making this a complete record of my travels. I am fortunately in that I do have the exact dates for most of my trips, either from my journal or from the passport stamps (I have kept all my old passports)

Passport stamps don't help for trips within Europe of course, but yes, I do have all my old ones

Quoting Beausoleil

BTW, if you have the original digital photos, they should have the date taken. This only helps with digital photos of course.

Yes, I'm working backwards from digital photos so I'm fine for now

I do have a complete list as I put together a book for my husband a couple of years ago, as a Christmas present, of all the holidays we'd taken together to that point, and I did it in chronological order, so I've now started working backwards through that. I'm in mid 2014 and have to get to 1981!! At least we took fewer holidays in those early years together so I might be able to speed up towards the end

Quoting puppa17

I think it's much simpler and much nicer to just hang a big map on your wall and draw uge flags in any of the places u ve been. maybe a nice pic of the trip. It doesn't matter about the dates, it's the memories that matters!

Simpler maybe, but I'm not sure where in our small house I would put such a map and in any case I like the idea of seeing the stats come together here. I have photos aplenty, and souvenirs, and yes, of course great memories, so this is just an addition to those records, not to replace them

I did so last year.
It took some months to enter the data. I still have traces of my travels and flights since 1986.
I also used my passport stamps for a pretty accurate result since there.

Before that, for travels I did with my parents in the 70's, I used my memory and put approximative dates. Order of stops is also wrong but in result I succeed to have a good chronology of my travels since I was 5 years !!!
Lot of fun to discuss with my sisters where we have been and when !!!

Wow, I hadn't thought to go back to when I was five! To be honest, most of my childhood trips were in England or Wales and I'm only adding overseas travels, ignoring UK breaks even from recent years. But there are a few memorable trips abroad from my childhood and youth I may add in due course - thanks for the inspiration