More free routes

Love it or hate it, Trail magazine publishes a decent selection of walking routes every month and their online library, trailroutes.com, has 30 free routes (8 in Wales) plus another 5 free routes for subscribers.

Most of the walks have GPS and Memory Map data (although the couple of GPS routes I have tried have been very poor quality - lots of unedited waypoints, looks like a converted 'track' file to me, poor show guys). They also give you detailed route description, a couple of photos, route card, gradient profile and OS mapping.

They have basically re-purposed all of the routes they have published over the years, so don't go expecting any new routes if you have a 4 foot pile of back issues in the attic.

The bad news is that they charge £2.00 for the routes that are not free, but subscribers get a 50% discount. As I mentioned, I have only tried a couple of the digital mapping files, not very representative, but if the files were tidied up and commented properly, I could stretch to a pound.

Anyway, get over there and snaffle the freebies and don't forget your 5 free credits if you are a subscriber. I would be interested in your comments on the GPS data ;)