Snowdon’s summit is at the top, but it’s valley high for Edale

Ordnance Survey’s (OS) analysis of almost 400,000 public routes created over the past twelve months in the digital map and planning tool OS Maps has revealed that the Peak District is currently the most popular destination to create routes for.
OS, by breaking the country down into square kilometres and counting the number of routes passing through each square, has produced a league table that sees the Edale area of the Peak District occupying six of the top ten spots, with Snowdon’s summit comfortably taking the top spot by some distance. The Lake District’s Scafell Pike summit and Ambleside appear at number three and five respectively.

Blue map of Great Britain

Nick Giles, Managing Director of Ordnance Survey Leisure, says: “It may be a relatively small island we live on, but it’s crammed with variation and beauty. I think this is reflected in these tables, there is a nice geographic spread – though it would be nice to see more routes being created in Scotland. The Peak District is up there with any place in the world, and Edale, its village and valley, is a vast and stunning part of the country. With its easy access from Manchester and Sheffield, and it being either the start or end of the Pennine Way, depending on which way you’re walking it, it’s easy to see why it features so heavily in our league table with almost 21,000 routes.”

Assuming each of Edale’s routes takes an average of an hour, it would take one of its 353 residents 875 days, or 2.4 years, to complete every walk. It would take the entire village 846 years to do this.

Nick continues: “Over the past twelve months we have introduced some key features to OS Maps, such as 3D route planning, to make the outdoors enjoyable, accessible and safe for all, and we have some exciting things coming up in development. The app now contains almost 1.2 million private and public routes, it is one of the largest databases of its kind in the world, and it’ll be interesting to see how much this league table changes next year.”

OS has created another league table to establish the most popular towns and cities to create routes in. To conduct the analysis OS has looked at the full extent of the towns and cities rather than the square kilometre method, hence why Ambleside, which appears in both tables, has two different number of routes. What stands out in this league table is London boroughs Richmond-upon-Thames appearing in third spot and Wandsworth in sixth. Though when cross-referenced with the recently added OS Open Greenspace data it may not be so surprising, as Richmond-upon-Thames, percentage wise, is by far the greenest of all London’s boroughs with 323 greenspaces, and Wandsworth is not too far behind with 294.

Nick continues: “As well as those two London boroughs, Guilford, Winchester, Sheffield and Bath also feature in the top ten. Is this reflective of increasing numbers of people exploring and adventuring closer to home? I hope so. Certainly, the greenspace map layer we launched earlier this year within OS Maps will help with that. Encouragingly though, what this all demonstrates is our nation’s never-ending love for being outside.”

1 Km Grid Squares with number of routes going through that square
Grid square, location, number of routes:

• SH6054 Snowdon (Summit) 3779
• SK1285 Edale 3590
• NY2107 Scafell Pike (Summit) 3007
• SK0786 Edale Cross 2636
• SK0886 Edale (Jacob’s Ladder) 2632
• NY3704 Ambleside 2587
• SH6154 Snowdon (Pyg Track) 2581
• SK1283 Edale (Mam Tor) 2529
• SK1384 Edale (Hollins Cross) 2492
• SK1185 Edale 2452
• SO0121 Pen y Fan 2404
• SH6455 Pen-y-pass 2377
• NY2806 Langdale Fell (Cumbria Way) 2359
• NY2208 Great End (Scafell Pike) 2342
• NY3307 Grasmere (Centre) 2311
• SK1085 Edale (Upper Booth) 2298
• SK1284 Edale (Cold Side) 2288
• NY2308 Allen Crags (Scafell Pike) 2278
• NY3415 Helvellyn (Summit) 2271
• NY2623 Keswick 2244

Top 10 cities and towns and number of routes

• Ambleside 2731
• Keswick 2523
• Richmond upon Thames 1278
• Bath 1234
• Sheffield 1205
• Wandsworth 1169
• Winchester 1147
• Guildford 1140
• Bakewell 1091
• Church Stretton 1003