Digital Maps of Britain for Walkers

If you travel by air nowadays part of the in-flight entertainment will be a moving map showing the plane and where it is in the world.

The same technology is available for walkers at a very affordable price.

If you already have a smartphone then you already own enough hardware; if you have a Garmin GPS device then that, too, will probably work.

But you need a map to show you where you are and where you have been.

Google Maps (and most of the others – Bing, Apple, etc) will show you urban features like the nearest Starbucks or ATM. They may show some footpaths but they probably won’t show contours, rock features or summit heights.

For these features the Ordnance Survey excels. Their products are sold by companies such as Memory-map, Viewranger, Mapyx and by themselves. If you can afford them they are excellent but they are usually restricted to a single device and there are often limits on printing.

For many years, the OS were very protective of their copyright. In 2010 they relaxed this with the release of Opendata mapping with a range of features but still not really competing with the Landranger and Explorer products.

Meanwhile, Open Street Map has been developing as a ‘crowdsourced’ map where contributors record their own tracks and upload them as roads/footpaths/canals or whatever.

Local Authorities must, by law (except in Scotland),  maintain ‘definitive maps’ of rights of way. Many of these are now released on an Open Government Licence.

Putting this all together it is possible to make a map for walkers that gives you almost everything from the OS Explorer mapping. The main thing missing are property boundaries (fences, hedges etc) and Rights of Way where the Local Authority has not released the data. If you can manage without these, read on…..

As a walker myself (most of the Pennine Way in 1966) and retired IT professional I have been working on Digital Mapping for several years. (A software program has over 3000 users in over 60 countries.) I have assembled Britain maps for walkers with a combination of data from the OS, Open Street Map and Local Authority Rights of way data. The mapping can be downloaded to a mobile device at home so does not need 'mobile data' coverage when on the trail. It can also be used on desktop computers.

The mapping is available in two forms. For Garmin Mapping units (Dakota, Montana, some Etrex, etc) that can display maps and have memory space (about 1GB) or a memory card then a single map covering the whole country is available for £20  Black Friday offer price £10. This is a 'native' Garmin map, not a Custom Map nor Birdseye. 

For Smartphones, the mapping is available is seven areas for £6 each or £25 for the whole of Britain. It is in a form suitable for several popular applications but free software will convert it for many more.

Once downloaded they are yours to keep - you can use them on any compatible device that you own. 

Questions ? please Email me.

Click one of the maps below for more…….

Dove Smartphone DOvedale Garmin

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