UK National Trails

[Tim Jenkins]

Are the UK national trails e.g. Offa's Dyke Path, Cotswold Way, Pennine Way etc specifically marked on the maps? If not is there a way to do this?

[Xavier]

On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 07:29:12AM -0700, Tim Jenkins wrote:
>Are the UK national trails e.g. Offa's Dyke Path, Cotswold Way,
>Pennine Way etc specifically marked on the maps?

At least Offa's Dyke Path seems to be entered into OSM:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=Offa%27s%20Dyke%20Path#map=19/51.78344/-2.67169

> If not is there a way to do this?

Yes, add them to OSM if they are missing from OSM.

Anticipating your next question of: "Are they present in OsmAnd?" I'll
have to defer to others. I suspect, given OsmAnd's 'foot routing'
option, that the answer is: "yes, provided someone has properly entered
them into OSM first".

[Tim Jenkins]

Believe this refers to Offa's Dyke itself - not the trail.

To elaborate - I assume the trails are shown as footpaths but not specifically as National Trails. As the footpath annotations on the maps are rather difficult to

see (rather indistinct) it becomes difficult to follow them. If the National Trails were marked more distinctly (e.g coloured dotted lines) it would help and be useful if walking these trails.

[Bart Eisenberg]

I'm not sure if this helps, but here is OpenStreetMap's take on the status of National Trails in its database.  Where noted, these are tagged as relations: a set of trails/footpaths given a single identifier.    

How OsmAnd renders this mapping data is another question, but you might experiment with Configure map > Map style.  For hiking, I tend to favor the Offroad style.  (My video essay on OSM as a worldwide hiking map is here.)

[Andy Townsend]

On 29/09/2019 15:47, 'Xavier' via Osmand wrote:

On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 07:29:12AM -0700, Tim Jenkins wrote:

Are the UK national trails e.g.  Offa's Dyke Path, Cotswold Way, Pennine Way etc specifically marked on the maps?

At least Offa's Dyke Path seems to be entered into OSM:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=Offa%27s%20Dyke%20Path#map=19/51.78344/-2.67169

Nominatim (which is behind the search box on the openstreetmap.org website) won't find relation names, only roads and paths with that name.  If you search there for "Pennine Way" you'll find lots of residential roads but you won't find the long-distance path sections such as https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/4082615 .

If not is there a way to do this?

Yes, add them to OSM if they are missing from OSM.

I'd be really surprised if any of the older UK Long Distance Paths were missing, though there might be some gaps.  The exception might be the Wales Coast Path, some of which is newer.  See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Long-distance_footpaths_in_the_United_Kingdom for lots more detail.

Anticipating your next question of: "Are they present in OsmAnd?" I'll have to defer to others.  I suspect, given OsmAnd's 'foot routing' option, that the answer is: "yes, provided someone has properly entered them into OSM first".

In OsmAnd I've just updated the data local to me and looked at somewhere where I'd expect the Yorkshire Wolds Way to appear.  Unfortunately it doesn't in OsmAnd's "standard" walking map.  Maybe there's a flag that I need to enable somewhere to show relation membership?

Alternatively, you could perhaps use an online map that shows this information.  https://hiking.waymarkedtrails.org/#?map=15!54.3017!-2.2007 is one example, but probably not so straightforward to configure as a tile source.  https://map.atownsend.org.uk/maps/map/map.html#zoom=15&lat=52.44332&lon=-3.09042 will work though, as it includes all the info in the tiles:

To add it as a tile source to OsmAnd: 

• Map view / menu / plugins / online maps / enable
• Map view / menu / configure map / map source / define/edit
• Choose a name
• http://map.atownsend.org.uk/hot/{0}/{1}/{2}.png
• Min zoom 0
• Max zoom 24
• Save

Obviously this loses _the_ big benefit of OsmAnd (offline maps).  I did look a creating an OsmAnd version of the map.atownsend.org.uk map style a few years ago, but after looking at the style definition it got put at the bottom of the "too hard" pile.

Best Regards,

Andy

[Tim Jenkins]

Many thanks for your input - I will investigate your links. Very new to Osman so still learning!

[Tim Jenkins]

Have found a solution - Settings - Configure Maps - Map Rendering - Routes - Hiking Symbol Overlay.

Highlights all National Trails with abbreviated names.

Again, many thanks for all your help!

Tim

[Andy Townsend]

On 29/09/2019 18:51, Tim Jenkins wrote:

Have found a solution - Settings - Configure Maps - Map Rendering - Routes - Hiking Symbol Overlay.

Highlights all National Trails with abbreviated names.

Excellent - thanks for that!  I did try looking for some sort of display option but (not unexpectedly) couldn't find it.

One slight issue is that it displays the international route ref over the national one (so "E2" for the Wolds Way).  I can think of very few places* in the UK where the existence of international routes is even acknowledged so this is a bit confusing, but that's not an OsmAnd issue since there's no info on https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1976184 (in this example) to say that "E2" isn't signed on the ground.

Best Regards,

Andy

*at one place on the Trans-Pennine Trail in Chesterfield there's a sign that says "Istanbul XYZ miles", which presumably is via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:E8%20European%20long%20distance%20path , which part of the TPT is part of.