ViewRanger launches ‘Great Trail’ series for ‘off road sat nav’

The Pennine Way has topped a list of the nation’s favourite routes to cycle or walk, so ViewRanger has made it the first in its new series of Great Trails maps. These aim to provide all the mapping needed for long-distance walks in a neat package that turns your mobile phone into a fully featured off-road sat nav.

In partnership with ViewRanger, readers of regional lifestyle magazines were invited to vote for their favourite places to walk and the results were diverse. The top six were the Pennine Way, the South West Coastal Path, the South Downs, the Lake District, the Cotswold Way and the West Highlands Way.

Craig Wareham, CEO of Augmentra, the company behind ViewRanger, said: “The contributors to this survey were not necessarily hardcore outdoor enthusiasts, and we saw that people were probably doing the long-distance routes in stages, perhaps a bit each weekend. To help, we decided to package all the maps they would need within a Great Trails series. This would allow weekend walkers to use their phone as an off-road sat nav to find interesting walks along the route and find a good pub for lunch.”

ViewRanger offers more than just map display. It is interactive allowing a route to be overlaid and show your location, and uses GPS to let you know when you go off course. There is a unique panoramic feature to help identify points of interest in the landscape and a built-in sports computer to tell you speed and distance travelled.