Windrose has no account, no ads, no analytics and no internet use, and it reads no sensors at all. Your lesson progress, quiz scores, pacing calibration and settings sit on the phone, and we never see them.
Section oneWho holds the map
The app comes from SARAH SPRUCE LIMITED, which trades as LumenMeadow Games and is registered at c/o TLW Solicitors Ltd, Centre for Advanced Industry, Coble Dene, North Shields NE29 6DE, United Kingdom; its director is Sarah Louise Spruce. Where this page speaks of personal data, that company is its controller, under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. The address for all of it is bearing@sarahspruce.rest.
Section twoSensors: none
This is the unusual part, and it is deliberate. Windrose does not read the magnetometer, the accelerometer, GPS or network position. It cannot tell which way your phone is pointing or where in the world it is, because a trainer does not need to know and because the moment an app asks for those things it starts collecting them. The practice dial moves because your finger moves it.
Section threeKept on your phone
- how far through the lessons you are, and your best quiz scores;
- your pacing calibration — the stride length you measured;
- settings: degrees or quadrant display, rose detail, backdrop, accent.
All of it lives in the app's private storage on the device. There is no server behind Windrose, so nothing is uploaded and nothing syncs. If Android's own backup is switched on for your phone, that data may be included in the backup Google keeps under your account, on Google's terms rather than ours.
Section fourNever collected
No sign-in, no email address, no advertising identifier, no analytics events, no crash SDK of our own, no profiling. We do not know how many people practise, how often, or how well.
Section fiveGoogle Play
The store is the one party standing between us and you. Google Play ships the app on its own terms, and if a phone is set to send usage and diagnostics to Google, our Play Console dashboard may show aggregate crash figures. No person, phone or score is identifiable in them; they exist so we can find what crashed.
Section sixYounger navigators
Scouts, Duke of Edinburgh groups and school clubs are a natural audience. The app has no chat, no links out and nothing to buy, and it collects nothing from anyone, whatever their age.
Section sevenPractice and the real hill
Windrose is a trainer, not an instrument. It has no idea where you are, it does not handle magnetic declination or the difference between grid north and true north for your sheet, and its practice maps are abstract grids rather than real terrain. Do not navigate by it.
On the ground, carry a real map and compass and know how to set them, learn declination from an instructor or a proper manual, leave your route with somebody, and take warm layers and a torch. If you need help in the British hills, call 999 or 112, ask for the police and then for mountain rescue.
Section eightEmail
Mail is the only place where we learn anything about anybody. We keep a thread while the conversation is live and for no more than a year after our last message, relying on our legitimate interest in answering people who write in. Nothing from it is used for anything else.
Section nineRights and complaints
The full UK GDPR set applies — access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection, portability — although an email thread is the only file we could ever hand over. Ask and you will hear back inside a month. Still unsatisfied? The Information Commissioner's Office hears complaints: ico.org.uk, or 0303 123 1113.
Section tenClearing and changes
One action wipes the lot: find Windrose in Android's app settings, open its storage and clear the data. The stride you measured and every score go with it, as they do if you simply remove the app. And this page? It changes only when a release changes the data picture, and it changes first, carrying a new date beside the package name.
SARAH SPRUCE LIMITED (LumenMeadow Games) · c/o TLW Solicitors Ltd, Centre for Advanced Industry, Coble Dene, North Shields NE29 6DE · bearing@sarahspruce.rest