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Phil's Hiking Resources

Useful Links

Free Digital Maps for Garmin GPS  

I’ve recently been preparing to take my Garmin Oregon 600 to the Alps so have been researching some free GPS mapping sources.

Here are a few i’ve come across that might be of interest to you:

 

Here is a nice little blog post explaining how to get Open Street Map mapping onto your GPS…

and here is openstreetmap.org’s own wiki on “OSM Map On Garmin”…

The GPSFileDepot.com have a tutorial on loading digital mapping to a Garmin Unit using BaseCamp

And finally here is how you geolocate and uploading a scanned JPG map to your Garmin GPS in a KMZ file using Google Earth…

 

I’ve also learned that you can get MapSource for free legally:

  1. Download the Garmin Training Centre:
    http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=835, and install it…
  2. then download and install Garmin MapSource Updates:
    http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=209.

 

 

External links for our Hills & Mountains  

We’ve added some useful external links to the pages for each individual Mountain, Hill and/or Trigpoint:

  • Wikipedia the article link for a hill if we have it (for approx 10% of Hills & Mountains (& also some trigpoints)
  • GeoHack – a Wikipedia tool which provide links to various mapping services for the specified  geographical coordinates of our Hills.
  • OS Maps (Bing) – Detailed OS mapping for the location of our Hills, as provided by Big Maps
  • Google Map – Detailed overhead photography, with local bicycle tracks and a Wikipeadia overlay provided by Google maps.
  • Geograph Photos –  geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of the UK
  • hill-bagging.co.uk – a link to the same hill on www.hill-bagging.co.uk
  • Trigpointing UK –  a link to the same trigpoint on www.trigpointinguk.com

See this example page…

www.haroldstreet.org.uk/waypoints/download/?hillnumber=278&/Ben+Nevis

Hope this is useful and do feel free to suggest other services…

 

 

Great Resources  

  • UK Hills Database: Chris Crocker & Graham Jackson’s comprehensive database of all UK hills – the basis of much of the Waypoint data on my Waypoint Pages
  • Where’s the Path Bill Chadwick’s really nifty little map viewing tool tool
  • Chris Crocker Statistical Topics in Hill walking Web Site; lots of good stuff
  • SMC’s GPS CD-Rom for Scottish Hills, for several GPS types & formats
  • Phil Brady’s Information on converting Grid References
  • Welsh 3000s Challenge The Welsh 3000s Challenge website; Everything you need to know to successfully complete the Welsh 3000s

Other GPS Walking Sites  

Walking Newsgroups & Forums  

  • sci.geo.satellite-nav newsgroup Source of infinite advice on all things GPS;
  • uk.rec.walking UK Walking newsgroup;
  • RHB “Relative Hills of Britain” Discussion Group – everything about Marilyns you never wanted to know


Author: Phil Newby