on our tour in Scotland i really missed OS mapping. It's not feasible to carry paper maps for the kind of area we were covering but i really like to be able to look for interesting things on route and find out what certain features are.

What are the options as far as OS on a portable device?

take to the street training room

If you have an N96 or a blackberry this site is good, you down load an aplication, run the programme when you start the ride, at the end you get prompted to send a text of the ride and it appears on the site all mapped up with altitude and what have you, works for me

have never used one yet but i imagine that for the kind of thing you want it for (checking out names of features, finding hidden fp's etc) they wouldn't be ideal. and they can never be as reliable as a map. speaking from experience of planning routes online compared with on a proper map…

I've got Viewranger on my N95, seems ok so far.

this isn't for navigation, i can't carry maps covering the 600 miles of road we covered. I use a garmin GPS for that. I just REALLY missed being able to have a quick look at the map to say 'ooh look that's an old roman fort over there' or 'that Ben X and loch Y' on the horizon.

That viewranger looks like the kind of thing. I have an N96.

would still prefer something with a slightly bigger screen though

iOSMaps is now available free on the iPhone – pretty simple but basically gives 1:50k OS maps with your location marked. Needs a phone signal (or WiFi) to work though

For me, Mapyx Quo software with the 1:25k and 1:50k map tiles of your choice, and a cheap Pocket PC or Windows Mobile device with GPS. If you just want to browse then obviously you don't need the GPS.

Quo is the least expensive for OS map tiles.

sell the Garmin and buy a Satmap active 10 – cover both bases?

MemoryMap Navigator on a Windows mobile device. Cheap sat-nav from Ebuyer can easily be turned into such a thing, but battery life can be an issue. Windows mobile based phone will do the same thing

multimap works on windows PDAs, I used it on my dell axim for while before I gave up. Axim kept crashing and battery life was pathetic, other PDAs may work better.

My PDA phone has memory map on it. You install memory map on your pc and dowload the maps/bits of maps you want to your PDA. Mine has 2 of the 12 maps @1:50,000 and the Southdowns way and NewForest 1:25,000 plus the whole of the UK @ 1:250,000. If I had a bigger memory card I guess I could do more. I don't navigate all the time but sometimesif usful to drag it out to work out a change of route or leave it on in my bag to record the route to download later, although I always have a paper map. I was useful road touring when you cover such a big area it is only practicable to carry 1:250,000 on paper but it is handy to have a bit of detail when needed.

I've got Viewranger on my N95, seems ok so far.

+1 for that call. CHeap as chips as you can build up areas you want as you go along. I've got it on a Nokia 5800 which has the touch screen which can be used with gloves on or sticky thing etc

the satmap active 10 looks good, just the ticket in fact.

could do with some user reviews though, it's a fairly new product.

also the PDA and memory map looks like it might be cheaper

Mapyx or Memory Map are the obvious ones. Memory Map works well on a Pocket PC – I've being playing around with an erm, evaluation copy of memory Map on a Dell Axim x50, which has a nice big screen, works with bluetooth or compact flash GPS, and was about £50 on the 'Bay.

There is free software out there too, specifically stuff that lets you calibrate a scan of an OS map or a download of tiles from the OS's map on demand service, but it seems a bit clunky.

the only bummer is i already own the entire country at 1:50k for tracklogs

You can easily run something like Anquet or Memory Map on a Windows Mobile 5 PDA and you you could pick up one of these for a song nowadays. If you're not using it extensively, then battery life wouldn't be an issue. (I presume you mean to rely on a larger scale map and only dig out the 1:50k when you really need it?)

Oh – great photos btw 🙂

thanks druidh

yeah it's just for the odd spot, the battered 1:250k with the squiggly highlighter line does the rest 🙂

I have a Satmap Active 10 and it is perfect for what you describe, easy to use, tough as Chuck Norris and very accurate, but it was hella expensive (nigh on £500 with the unit, bike mount and the maps).

If you already have Tracklogs than I'd load the area you're visiting onto a cheapo second hand PDA and take that with you. This chap has one for sale that might fit the bill

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/fs-hp-ipaq-2790-pda-with-memorymap

sadly i'm pretty sure tracklogs isn't compatible with PDA operating systems.

plus my laptop stuggles to cope with it after a while and it's got 3Gb of RAM so god knows how a PDA would!

Ah, right. I'd go with MemoryMap then as it's tailored quite nicely to PDAs – you can specify the exact area you want to send to your PDA and save on memory.

Cost aside, Satmap Active 10 is the way to go. It does everything you want without any hassle, and lots more. I've been using one for a couple of months and am very impressed.

For people interesting in buying computer based maps, quo has a cracking deal on at the moment. £80 for the whole of the UK in OS 1:50,000.

You can also get 10km x 10km 1:25,000 tiles for £2 each, though this quickly mounts up if you after any sizable area. Still way cheaper than any of the others.