Hi, I'm doing my first C2C in June and have the Ordnance Survey OL33 (St Bees to Keld) and OL34 (Keld to RHB) 1:25000 strip maps plus Wainwright's 'A Coast to Coast Walk' pictorial guide book.

Are these sufficient to get me across to RHB?

Thanks for any advice

I'd recommend the Stedman Guide (Trailblazers). I found it very helpfull and will be using it again this year.

I'm sure those would get you across, but like MarkDay I used Stedman and thought it was great.

You are very lucky to have the two strip maps, classics now out of print.

Wainwrights is the bible to taste the flavor and understand the geography of the walk, but paired with practical Stedman the two guides make a great team.

The two strip maps are still available as pdf files. I downloaded them from somewhere ??? don't remember where, a couple of years ago. They can be printed out by a plan printing company.

You need to be aware of minor changes in the route over the years which will not be on the OS strip maps or possibly in the Wainwright book.

Personally I think a couple of the new lines that have emerged such as the sidling path into Scarth Gap and over Haystacks for instance are are more aesthetically pleasing - to me at least. There are several recent threads that discuss them.

On our crossing in 2009 we found the Stedman book good. I felt the footprint maps were poor and much preferred the Harvey maps which we bought en route as a replacement. The reasons we found the footprint maps inadequate are the lack of a referenced grid so you cannot use a gps to locate your self or locate a point from a given grid reference. Also the scale varies from map to map. As the legend says "map scale is approximately 1:50,000" - I don't know how they have the audacity to sell them.

I would suggest that as you have the OS strip maps, you should photocopy them for the crossing and keep the originals pristine.

I have the latest edition of the AW Coast to Coast Walk Guide by Chris Jesty. Updated and the route is highlighted in red.

I second what MarkF said about the strip maps. I seem to remember seeing them for sale on Amazon at exhorbitant prices. I don't know if anyone actually sold one for those prices of course.

To be fair about the Stedman book, I believe the scale varies somewhat on their maps too. But it isn't really a problem. They show a little more detail where needed.

Martin Wainwright's (no relation) book worked a treat in 2009.

If anyone is interested I have all of the timings from the steadman guide in an excel workbook on my website www.mark-day.com under the c2c planing section.

8 day versions of the timings and in this case mileages are available under the coast to coast 2011 section.