Last year, Anthony Hoyte spent 10 hours cycling the streets of London, using Strava to “draw” a giant snowman.
“Strava art” comes from planning out a route that—when uploaded to the site—shows a map that forms a shape or words.
This time, Hoyte rolled around Birmingham, riding 66km in order to create to create the biggest Santa Claus we’ve ever seen. He managed to get the drawing with no wrong turns causing unfortunate blemishes.
The 50-year-old started creating his vast doodles about four years ago by plotting drawings on a map and using the Strava app.
Since then he has created a “not very good” dog in Cheltenham, an elaborate virtual face on the roads of Cardiff and a pair of elephants in Birmingham.
“Ideally you need a place with a high concentration of roads,” he said. “And then I look at the map and look for things I can draw. It’s like looking at clouds and seeing pictures.”
