Coast to Coast

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Maps for Coast to Coast Walkers

Harvey Maps ] [ OS Outdoor Leisure Maps ] [ OS Explorer Maps ] [ OS Landranger Series ]

In your Coast to Coast Walk preparations remember that mountain and moorland country will test your navigation skills. You will want to be familiar with your maps.

Britain is mapped with a precision not yet achieved by many countries anywhere else in the world. We offer a choice of Ordnance Survey Outdoor Leisure strip maps, Explorer and Landranger series maps to help keep you on course.

Harvey Maps

The introduction by Harvey of their special style of mapping adds an exciting choice for Coast to Coast walkers. The route is covered in two maps, St Bees to Keld and Keld to Robin Hood's Bay. Whereas Ordnance Survey maps cater for the general market and include information for everyone, Harvey maps are designed for the specialist walker and mountaineer.

The Coast to Coast maps are large scale strip maps focusing on the long distance route. A map folds into 6 panels, each taking a section of the walk and linking it cleverly to the next panel/section. Bear in mind that there is formally no such thing as the Coast to Coast path. You make your way along paths, tracks and lanes, some of them clearly marked C to C, some of them marked with more local names. You cross unmarked country, where the path may well be anything but clear.

There are several points at which you make your own choice of way forward. Alfred Wainwright, once surprisingly a cult figure, now disappearing into the mists of long distance walking history, deliberately tramped across whatever land lay in his way, defying landowners to challenge him. Generations of walkers following, as he begged them not to, have had varieties of route plotted for them. These Harvey maps are interesting in that they indicate points at which choices can be made, and they show by means of a variety of symbols whether you are following track, path, indistinct path or no visible path. They show, too, whether your route is by permissive path, indistinct permissive path or C to C path with no right of way. Sounds alarming? Well, it is a good idea to know when you've left a right of way, so that you can disarm a farmer with your diplomatic smile before he waves his stick at you!

A Harvey map is designed for the modern walker and mountaineer. To the conventional National Grid referencing, it adds information for GPS users. You may find this information especially useful if you are a native of a country which does not use the grid referencing system - e.g. USA or France. The map's colouring is more distinctive than that used by the Ordnance Survey, and this is particularly helpful when you're moving in high country; the contour lines are picked out at 75m intervals, and these stand up clearly.

When a contour line on an OS maps passes through rocky country, the rocks are drawn onto the map and the exact line of the contour can be obscured. The Harvey method is to show the steep rocks simply by changing the colour of the contour line from brown to grey; this allows the skilled map reader to interpret the shape of a rocky summit, for example, more clearly. There are none of the heavily marked political boundary lines which many people find dangerously distracting on the OS maps. On these C to C strips, the large scale map has a diagram running beside it which indicates your progress in miles and kilometres across the 6 panels which make up the whole sheet. You can also see where you are against the whole route. Mapping symbols used concentrate on your requirements as a long distance walker: accommodation, tourist information, campsites, youth hostels and so on.

The map is presented on paper with an encouragingly shiny weatherproof finish.