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By Melanie, 15, May, 2013 8:00 am

Guest blog by Jayne Phenton, Media Co-ordinator for Living Streets @livingstreets

Last weekend I visited Wiltshire and walked seven or so miles up to Bratton Camp and back.

The landlady of the B&B where I was staying was shocked. ‘You must be very fit’, she said.  ‘Jayne walks to work every day’, said my friend.  Her jaw dropped further.  ‘It’s less than two and quarter miles’, I reassured her.

‘I’m the sort of person who parks right outside the shop’, said Mrs Fawlty, looking shame-faced. I suggested she might give walking a go during Walk to Work Week,13-17 May, which is part of National Walking Month run by Living Streets.

I’m fortunate to live a 40 minute walk away from the Living Streets office in London and especially so because my commute takes me across the River Thames and past historic sites like the Tower of London.

But whatever your route, a brisk walk to work is a great opportunity to clear your head, and prepare for your day. Walking is great for your health in every kind of way.  It’s a valuable weight bearing exercise, an excellent work out for your heart, proven to be good for your mental wellbeing and you’re strengthening 200 muscles with minimal impact on your joints.

If you do want to lose a pound or two then building some walking into your day is going to help.  Just half an hour’s walk to work and home again could use up to 250 calories. Sign up on Living Streets’ website www.walktowork.org.uk and you can log your walks, see how many muffins you’ve burned off and compete with your colleagues to see who can be top walker.

Continue reading 'Getting fitter needn’t be an uphill struggle!'»

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By Gemma, 13, May, 2013 8:00 am

The Keswick Mountain Festival is the largest event of its kind in the UK and we’re proud to be the official mapping partner of the Festival this year. Set in the heart of the Lake District, it inspires thousands of visitors to get into the great outdoors, try new activities and enjoy exciting experiences.

The event, which is being held at Crow Park in Keswick from Wednesday 15– Sunday 19 May, promises to be jam packed with leisure activities (cycling, climbing, hiking, swimming, kayaking, triathlons and more) inspirational speakers such as Chris Bonington, Graham Obree and John Beatty, live music, parties, swim clinics and map reading workshops.  If you love the outdoors then this event is not to be missed.

Not only that, but if you book an activity at the Festival, you’ll receive a discount code giving you one month’s free access to OS getamap, our online route-planning and printing service. Over 140,000 routes have been drawn since its launch in March 2011. Subscribers benefit from free A4 Ordnance Survey mapping prints, extra route editing tools and full screen map view all for only £19.99 per annum.

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By Gemma, 7, May, 2013 9:37 am

Over the Bank Holiday weekend three surveyors from G&J Surveys were accompanied by Ordnance Survey’s Geodetic Analyst Mark Greaves to accurately measure the height of Tal y Fan, one of the smallest mountains in Wales.

Tal y Fan has a map height of 610 m (flush bracket height at triangulation pillar of 610.209 m) which is very close to the 609.6 m (2,000 ft) height that is generally accepted as defining mountain status in England and Wales. The weekend expedition was to check whether Tal y Fan should still hold mountain status or whether it should be reclassified as a hill. 

Tal y Fan translates as The End Peak or Peak End.  It is the most northerly of the 2,000 ft mountains in Wales and is situated at the end of the Carneddau mountain range.  Part of this mountain range forms the greatest continuous height above 3,000ft of any land in Britain south of the Scottish border. Beyond Tal y Fan are the fertile pastures of the Conwy valley and then the sea.  The history in the immediate vicinity of Tal y Fan dates back to prehistoric times as two monoliths still stand at the gateway to Bwlch y Ddeufaen (Pass of the Two Stones), this is the old pass through the mountains that was still in use during Roman times. 

The aim of the survey was to survey the very highest point of Tal y Fan and gather a minimum of two hours of summit data. After an afternoon of capturing height data the team returned to the Valley where it was down to Ordnance Survey’s Mark Greaves to process the data. 

After double checking the results it was then the responsibility of BBC Breakfast to reveal the results live on Monday morning. At 6.50 am live on BBC One it was confirmed that Tal y Fan measured 609.98 m (2,001 ft), some 38 cm (1 ft 3 in) above that needed to qualify for mountain status.

Read the BBC article too: ow.ly/kMc64

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By Gemma, 30, April, 2013 8:00 am

Since its launch in January our outdoor navigation app, OS MapFinder, has now reached over 100,000 downloads and over 600,000 sessions.  We’re thrilled with the success of the app, available now on the App Store, designed to map the way for walkers, runners and cyclists across Great Britain.

Our free-to-download iOS app contains overview mapping of the whole country alongside a sample tile of our detailed walking and cycling maps. You can then purchase more 1:25 000 and 1:50 000 in 100 km2 tiles (the same scales as our popular OS Landranger and OS Explorer paper maps) of the areas you want.

The four most popular tiles downloaded so far are:

Very popular areas for enjoying the British countryside!

Continue reading 'Our OS MapFinder app hits 100,000 downloads'»

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By Gemma, 29, April, 2013 8:00 am

The month of May marks the first birthday for the Wales Coast Path, a 870-mile route to take you around the whole coast of Wales. And if you’re really up for a challenge, you can make it 1027 miles by including the Offa’s Dyke!

Walking costs nothing, and the path is open to everyone. You can walk the path from north to south or vice versa. You can ride or cycle some parts and you can make it into very short chunks or set yourself a charity challenge and do the whole thing in one go.

To join in the celebrations, we’re featuring a walk of the week that uses part of the Wales Coast Path along the way…

Our coastal loop around Nash Point and Llantwit Major starts near the lighthouses at Nash Point and moves into the picturesque town of Llantwit Major, about 20 miles south-west of Cardiff. It’s an historic town with a history stretching back over 3000 years. The narrow winding streets are lovely to walk around – although do take care as most don’t have pavements. You could also stop off at one of the pubs in the town to break your walk – I had an excellent Sunday roast at The Old Swan Inn with family a couple of months ago.

  Continue reading 'The Wales Coast Path is one year old in May!'»

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By Gemma, 23, April, 2013 9:18 am

Routes are now easy to share on OS MapFinder

We’ve recently released OS MapFinder v1.3 in the App Store and there are a host of route sharing features now available on our popular outdoors app. Some of you told us that you’d like to be able to use OS MapFinder in conjunction with your subscription to OS getamap, our online route planning service, and you’ll be pleased to hear that we’ve done just that. You can now import and export GPX routes to and from OS MapFinder – so it works with OS getamap routes that you’ve already planned, as well as any third party apps and sites that create GPX files.

Not only that, but we’ve also added social integration features to our navigation app. This makes it easy for you to share routes with friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, email and more.

You’ve always been able to sync any maps you purchased between your iOS devices and we’ve listened to your feedback on being able to sync routes between your devices. Once you download version 1.3 of OS MapFinder, you’ll be able to do just that. Any devices linked to the same Apple ID will be able to sync routes and map purchases from now on.

To celebrate the new version we’ve also extended our price drop for many map purchases into Spring with up to 40% off 100km2 tiles at 1:25 000 scale.

Continue reading 'Are you sharing your OS MapFinder routes?'»

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By Gemma, 22, April, 2013 8:00 am

Image of the Prime Meridian at Greenwich produced courtesy of Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prime_meridian.jpg

We love to read about people who enjoy walking and the great outdoors as much as us – and Graham and Hilda Heap certainly fit the bill. The duo have recently devised a 273-mile long distance footpath which follows the line of the Greenwich Merdian.

The Greenwich Merdian Trail is now documented in a series of four books following the trail from it’s start in Peacehaven, Sussex, along the line of Prime Meridian to Sand Le Mere on the Holderness coast.The couple, from East Sussex, spent six years putting the trail together, and researching and walking the route to create their guidebooks.

The Greenwich Meridian itself is popular with visitors who make their way to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich to stand astride the line which separates east from west. Of course, the line of the Meridian continues through Britain, as well as many other countries on it’s journey from pole to pole. Graham and Hilda’s project aimed to create a route which follows the line of the Prime Meridian as closely as possible while following public rights of way.

Continue reading 'Walk the line on the Greenwich Meridian Trail'»

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By Melanie, 10, April, 2013 8:00 am

It’s about this time of year when many people start thinking about getting active – the promise of warmer weather and longer days often inspires us to get outdoors more and find the time to exercise.

There are so many fundraising events coming up across the country with hundreds of thousands of people committing to walk, run, cycle and swim to raise money for good causes. At Ordnance Survey, we are often asked to support charity events through providing mapping to work out routes or money and although we can’t support everyone, we are always interested to see what’s going on and hear about the efforts people are making to raise money whilst getting active.

We picked up one particular fundraising effort through an unlikely connection on twitter (more of that later). The Kiltwalk is a Scottish fundraiser (the hint is in the name!) raising money for leading Scottish children’s charities. They organise a series of sponsored walks, with varying options for length and effort around picturesque locations in Scotland.

Continue reading 'The Kiltwalk'»

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By Gemma, 8, April, 2013 8:00 am

Today’s guest post comes via Laura Canning at Pitchup.com 

Image courtesy of iStock

As a camper, maps have been part of my kit since my first camping trip, when my dad unfolded a map it looked like he’d had since his first camping trip all those centuries ago. The routes he pointed out we were going to walk looked quite long, and there didn’t appear to be a sweet shop marked anywhere despite long poring over the paper on my part, but it was a map and it was mine.

Opinions still differ on whether the map was handed down to me in a moving ‘now-I-pass-this-on-to-you-my-child’ ceremony, or whether I cried so much Dad had to give me the map to shut me up, but still. It was a map, it was mine, and Dad got his revenge by chuckling wildly at my efforts to fold it.

These days, a map will still always be on my packing list, but now my laptop comes along too to find campsites in England, Wales and beyond, check maps online and to find out what to see and do nearby. Dad disapproves, still clinging possessively to the handful of Sellotaped maps I allowed him to keep, but I can check online maps for any part of the country with a couple of clicks, zoom in to areas I’m interested in and know that everything on it is up to date.

Using Pitchup.com to find campsites brings up Ordnance Survey map views, available on all listings, where users can switch directly to Ordnance Survey view when zooming in to see all the usual OS features. There are top attractions, National Trust properties and Good Pub Guide pubs along the way too – the listing for Callow Top Holiday Park in Derbyshire, for example, has its Ordnance Survey map listing three local pubs and their distance from the park, walking routes from Ashburn and Thorpe and the National Trust properties The Old Manor and Winster Market House, all marked to see at a quick glance.

Continue reading 'Use Ordnance Survey maps with Pitchup.com'»