In reply to sn:
> However I generally prefer 1:25k when out on the hill, as there is a lot more useful information - walls, fences and uncultivated land being the prime ones, but also micro - tarns and more detail in the contours.
Agreed - if it's big enough to class as a feature I want to see it on a map.
> I also find, being used to 1:25k, that it takes an age to travel anywhere on a 1:50k
I grew up with 1:25k and got caught out when I used 1:50k in Norway for that exact reason. What I thought wasn't far turned out to be!
Where I live (Guernsey) is riddled with little lanes and footpaths, often only 50-200m long. At 1:50k the width of the roads would be thicker than the land between them, and even 1:25k is difficult to read in the little lane areas. The government now sell a GPS-based map at 1:15k which is much easier to use, and I was even lucky enough to have input into its design
. The first version actually used accurate road widths which meant many lanes were virtually impossible to see, so we made them start using a standard thickness like OS do and it's much better now. The most annoying thing was that they decided Guernsey needed it's own arbitrary geodetic grid, so a reference on the map is impossible to pump into a GPS
.
The only thing about 1:15k, 1:30k or 1:40k is that most compasses don't have romers for them. Luckily the BMC shop sells suitable romer cards.
Post edited at 16:48