IT Aids for Walkers – revised November 2024
The following apps are worth downloading to your smartphone, giving a wide range of support and information to make your rambling more enjoyable and safer. They can all be download from Playstore for Android phones and App Store for iPhones. There are many apps with the same name so please check that the publisher of the app (shown in brackets after the app name below) corresponds to what you are downloading. One word of warning – these apps do rely on your phone working properly and having enough power. If you are somewhere remote, be prepared in case your phone fails, have a paper map with you and learn how to navigate manually.
OS Maps (Ordnance Survey Ltd). This is the best app for most walkers. Although it is not free, it is well worth the money, compared with buying maps, which do need replacing as they wear out. It is the best app for printing maps and of course you should always take a printed map with you as a back up. You can print exactly the area required to cover your walk, avoiding the problem which sometimes occurs when you need two or even three purchased OS Maps to cover the area required. Walks and all the accompanying data (distance, height gained etc) are recorded for you.
The standard 1:25000 and 1:50000 map is quite messy when navigating in dense urban areas. OS Maps has an option called “standard map” which is more useful in these situations, accessed just by a click on the screen.
Map cases - A useful tip is to use A4 sized Grip Press Seal Lock Storage Bags (about £9 for 100 from Amazon) to use as a case for your printed maps. Dedicated map cases are very bulky and do not fold easily. These storage bags make excellent map cases being thin but rainproof, and very easily folded to put in your pocket when required.
Open Street Map (OsmAnd BV) is a free, editable, and open-source map of the world that is created and maintained by a community of volunteers. It has its own app but a much better choice is a version called Mapy (mapy.cz) One would assume that all versions of the Open Street map on the various platforms are the same, but this is not so. Although the actual map will be the same, the detail varies and by far the best for full information is Mapy. Available as an app and on-line, this is a brilliant program. It is free and although there is no option to see OS maps on it, for urban and semi-urban areas, it is well worth using. Mapy maps can be downloaded before you walk so no worries about not getting a phone signal. Also when visiting cities abroad, it is useful to download the Mapy map before leaving home. You do not need a data connection to navigate, as your phone just needs the downloaded map and a GPS signal.
Navigating in forests can be a nightmare, where the right-of-way as depicted on the OS map may be overgrown and impassable through lack of use, but many alternative routes created instead by walkers will not be shown on the OS map. Mapy will show these in great detail. The OS “standard map” overlay as mentioned above will also show some of these “non” rights-of-way.
Outdooractive (Outdooractive AG), Komoot (Komoot GmbH) and AllTrails are all good alternatives and give suggestions for walks in a given area and there are many other navigation apps available.
What3words – this is a system of identifying any area in the world down to a 3m x 3m square by allocating 3 words to the location. For instance, the entrance to the Municipal Club car park is pays.slam.duty. The app is called what3words and allows you to enter the 3 word reference and shows the location on a map, or vice versa, allows you to select a grid square and gives the what3words reference for others to locate it. It seemed a bit odd at first, but is rapidly being adopted by hotels, restaurants and the emergency services and has been the subject of an article in Walk magazine. The data base works offline and because it uses an algorithm to generate the words, only used 20MB of storage space. Excellent for walkers who normally use postcodes to find the start of a walk as this is a far more precise alternative. Solihull Ramblers give the what3words reference for the start of all our walks. Free
Met Office weather forecasting app. Many of us will have our favourite forecasting apps, some more reliable than others. The main weather factor that is of concern to most walkers is whether it will rain and when. The Met Office app has a rainfall radar map which can be amazingly accurate in informing you if to expect rain over the next few hours and exactly when. AccuWeather is also good.
Plant Snap. Most of us come across a plant or tree we want to identify while walking. Plant Snap takes a picture and identifies it for you. Free if you use it up to 5 times per day which is well adequate for most walkers. If you are a botanist, a single payment of £40 gives unlimited use for life, or you can pay £3 for a week.
New since September 2024 update:
Organic Maps. This is a new free mapping app based on Open Street Map which seems to be very good for entering a start and finish point and obtaining a route (walking or driving). It uses off-line navigation and downloads the required map for the area you are interested in, so works well where mobile signals may be poor, as it only relies on GPS to navigate. It has the option to give spoken directions including street names. Map detail is excellent and worth playing around with.
OS Locate (Ordnance Survey Ltd) is no longer a stand-alone app and any versions around will not be updated by OS. Instead, they have included it as part of the standard OS Maps app, and renamed it “Locate Me”. Apart from that, it works just as OS Locate did and still has the excellent on-screen version of a Silva compass. Free.
Mike Jay
