2025-11-14 –, Area
Walking remains a popular form of transport and exercise in Europe (Ramblers, 2020). Despite this, the provision of trail information that meets individual requirements remains inconsistent. This talk presents how the National Trust is using OpenStreetMap relations and working with others to promote a common representation to describe walking trails.
In Europe, walking presents significant benefit as a mode of transport and form of exercise. In the UK, it is the most popular activity undertaken in green spaces (Ramblers, 2020), and in the US, it is ranked the top leisure activity for 59% of adults (NCHS, 2024).
Discovering appropriate trails that meet individual needs can be challenging, with start/end points, difficulty and accessibility information described in different ways. As a leading outdoors provider, the National Trust is working with interest groups to define core trail information using consistent language, encouraging diverse audiences to benefit from quality data.
Previous work at SoTM 2019 captured an inventory of ways on NT land. Now, we are working to collate these into curated trails using OSM relations. The aim is to create a full inventory of National Trust walking trails, openly available to the public and app developers for innovative offers.
This presentation outlines the technical solution and challenges in representing our trail network in OSM. We would also like to understand how volunteers & the OpenStreetMap community can support with capturing and maintaining trails data, both on and off National Trust land, as a national resource.
walking, trails, relations, open data
Affiliation:National Trust
GIS Data Officer (Paths) at the National Trust.