Keeping track of long distance walks

[kooper35]

I was putting a rough plan together of a walk I want to start in march(ish) of next year and came across one problem, without keeping 500 odd OS maps in your pack how do you keep track of your route? with long long walks I'd imagine you'll have problems keeping gps trackers charged etc.  Except maybe using one of those wind up charger things *shrugs*

John the aspiring

[Addacomb]

For those of us with mapping software (Memory Map; Anquet etc) the best solution would be to print off each page that covered the route.

[kooper35]

I see your point  but the walk I'm going on is 1400miles *big grin* thats alot of print offs heh

[vghikers]

If you have mapping software I would think that's still the best method, if only for the weight: OS maps are heavy.
We did our own coast-to-coast walk of 183 miles and printed out our route at 1:25000 on 9 sheets of A4. Scaling up to your 1400 miles it would require 69 sheets, so that gives you a rough idea. It's quite a big initial effort to get it all printed but a lot lighter and more efficient than all those OS maps.

You could contact some of the LEJOG walkers like Alan Sloman and ask how they did it.

[peterdubh]

If you have mapping software I would think that's still the best method, if only for the weight: OS maps are heavy.
We did our own coast-to-coast walk of 183 miles and printed out our route at 1:25000 on 9 sheets of A4. Scaling up to your 1400 miles it would require 69 sheets, so that gives you a rough idea. It's quite a big initial effort to get it all printed but a lot lighter and more efficient than all those OS maps.

You could contact some of the LEJOG walkers like Alan Sloman [nofollow] and ask how they did it.

you could do this but only take the ones you need and have the rest posted on so that you could pick them up. anyway 1400!! are you following the cost around the uk or something else equaly as epic. good luck and enjoy it.

[kooper35]

I've just had a though,  a rare occurrence for me I know but still... I was stressing about keeping track of a long ass walk around europe and the simplest way seemed to be  printing the entire route onto a4 pages.  Was looking on play.com and found the Sony Ereader has come down in price a helluva lot,  it also solves another of my problems which was lugging around enough books/guides etc to keep me entertained during my travels. With the Ereader you can upload your own PDF's so I assume you could just come pile your entire route into pdf form and upload it along with all your other books/comics etc

http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/5261015/Sony-E-Reader-PRS-505-SC-Digital-Reader-Book/Product.html?source=5065&engine=froogle_electronics&keyword=Sony+E-Reader+PRS-505%2FSC+Digital+Reader+Book+%28Silver%29 [nofollow]

and no this isnt a plug as I don't own one yet, still a bit pricey for me but I'm sure by the time I come to doing this walk it will of come down that little bit more