Maps for Hebrides tour
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Maps for Hebrides tour
I am at phase 1 of planning a tour of the Western Isles and have struggled to find a sensible map of the islands. The local bookshop has the OS maps but I would need to buy quite a few of these to cover the whole area. I think I would be getting maps with a lot of sea on them!
Ive searched for other maps but cannot find a touring map.
Does anybody have suggestions?
I have GPS and computer access to maps but want a map or two that I can take with me.
Thanks
Dave
Ive searched for other maps but cannot find a touring map.
Does anybody have suggestions?
I have GPS and computer access to maps but want a map or two that I can take with me.
Thanks
Dave
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- Joined: 16 Mar 2012, 10:46pm
Re: Maps for Hebrides tour
There are not that many roads (unless you are doing off road routes), so I just visited a few pound shops and cheap book shops looking for a large scale road atlas and used pages taken from that. I think the one I ended up with was the Phillips Big Road Atlas of Britain. Check the scale of the maps for the Hebrides as a lot of them seemed to use a smaller scale for the islands! I've used this same map to tour the Outer Hebrides, Mull, Skye, Islay, Orkney and a few others now, just taking the bits I need! I do tend to have some higher res maps on my kindle but don't use them much.
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Re: Maps for Hebrides tour
https://wordery.com/cycling-in-the-hebr ... GwodnOkIJQ
I've just recently toured the islands and found more than enough info in this book.....the author is on this forum too and lives on Harris (I believe). There are so few roads that the wee maps in the book are all you really need for navigation purposes.
I've just recently toured the islands and found more than enough info in this book.....the author is on this forum too and lives on Harris (I believe). There are so few roads that the wee maps in the book are all you really need for navigation purposes.
Re: Maps for Hebrides tour
The Cicerone book is very good (though I found the vertical axis on its route profiles a bit alarmingly exaggerated! But I suppose better to find a hill is less steep in reality than the other way round...). I also used the Nicholson 1:250,000 map ('West Scotland and the Western Isles'), which gets (almost) everywhere on one sheet (it doesn't go as far south as Arran or the bottom half of the Kintyre peninsula); they do some 1:100,000 sheets of individual islands/groups of islands too: http://www.nicolsonmaps.com/acatalog/Nicolson-Maps.html
Re: Maps for Hebrides tour
I agree it's annoying buying a map which 2/3rds is sea, but I look at it that the cost of buying a few maps is tiny in comparison to the overall cost of the holiday. If it helps with the overall experience, and when I tour I'm a slow down and smell the roses sort of guy, then having detailed OS maps allows me to get more from the tour.
However if all your concern is how can I do the whole of the Hebrides in three days, the rip the pages out of a 1:250,000 road atlas and it'll tell you all you need.
However if all your concern is how can I do the whole of the Hebrides in three days, the rip the pages out of a 1:250,000 road atlas and it'll tell you all you need.
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Re: Maps for Hebrides tour
Thanks everybody
thats given me plenty of leads to get started
much appreciated
Dave
thats given me plenty of leads to get started
much appreciated
Dave
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Re: Maps for Hebrides tour
Oh and just a thought, but surprisingly I've often found that the maps that you get for free in TIC can be very useful. They often have places of interest, shops, cafes and other stuff marked that isn't on any road map. If you have a tablet/PC or whatever then you can easily purchase OS maps a relatively small "tile" at a time (which avoids having big chunks of sea!). I tend to purchase them for the islands I'm visiting and turn them into a pdf file that I store on my kindle (as I don't carry a tablet/PC). These are mainly used for planning where to visit next when stopped for the night or for lunch. The road atlas is fine for actual on the road navigation (I sometimes draw extra stuff on them if I'm going down a road that is not marked).
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Re: Maps for Hebrides tour
gloomyandy wrote:Oh and just a thought, but surprisingly I've often found that the maps that you get for free in TIC can be very useful. They often have places of interest, shops, cafes and other stuff marked that isn't on any road map. If you have a tablet/PC or whatever then you can easily purchase OS maps a relatively small "tile" at a time (which avoids having big chunks of sea!). I tend to purchase them for the islands I'm visiting and turn them into a pdf file that I store on my kindle (as I don't carry a tablet/PC). These are mainly used for planning where to visit next when stopped for the night or for lunch. The road atlas is fine for actual on the road navigation (I sometimes draw extra stuff on them if I'm going down a road that is not marked).
thats great advice
thanks again
Dave
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Re: Maps for Hebrides tour
I think this is the one which we saw everyone using up there. We had a smaller scale one which had all of the important info on, but this one has all of the sights and what they were called. http://www.stanfords.co.uk/ProductDetai ... 1849073233
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Re: Maps for Hebrides tour
The old Ordnance Survey Travelmaster series were good cycling maps, 1:250,000 scale topographic.
No longer available in paper form unless you can find them second hand, but available free to download the entire UK from Ordnance Survey here https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/busine ... aster.html
You can then print your own sections as you need them, Toughprint waterproof paper is a good option for cycle touring.
No longer available in paper form unless you can find them second hand, but available free to download the entire UK from Ordnance Survey here https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/busine ... aster.html
You can then print your own sections as you need them, Toughprint waterproof paper is a good option for cycle touring.