Car park sat nav or road atlas

[Wok de dog]

I'm fine at getting round the routes once there but have difficulty finding the car parks that the walks start from.
My road atlas is not clear enough and my satnav is no help.
Any advice, a good sat nav or road atlas or anything else?
Cheers

[bootsandpaddles]

An OS map might prove useful. If you are following published walk routes they usually give a grid reference for the start of the walk/car park.

[CharlesT]

I find Google Earth can be quite helpful if available for the location, particularly the Streetview function.

[tenohfive]

Google Streetview. OS maps have got some car parks marked, but once I know roughly where I want to start and finish I use a combination of satellite view to find car parks, or Streetview to look for roadside 2-3 car spaces.

[ceaser]

just wondering why your satnavs no help , the N and W coordinates are giving in the walk descriptions on here ,should just be a case of putting them in and off you go .

[kmsharp]

I find myself similarly challenged!

My solution is to use www.streetmap.co.uk to covert the grid reference of where the walk starts into a postcode which I can then put into my satnav. Given the area of some rural postcodes it's not a perfect solution, sometimes I have to resort to pulling off the road and turning on my Garmin GPS with OS mapping.

Keith.

[Rudolph]

Sat Nav's work for me but it takes a bit of preparation.

Using a Tom -Tom as an example you need to create a favourite of the car park's location using 'point on map'. Find the car park on the 1:25 OS map. Then compare the road layout on the OS map to tbe road map in your sat nav to create a favourite in the right place. That should get you to +/- 20m or so.

[Wok de dog]

That's grand,
I will try using the favourite's function on the sat nav along with the O/S map etc.
Thanks for replies fella's.

[prog99]

Another option that I use is to do a bit of research for prominent landmarks. Google streetview is really good for this, especially those slightly non official bits where you park just off of the road.
If walking from Drumochter, all the laybys are numbered

[tarbat]

My car's satnav can import a POI file in GPX format. What would be useful is a GPX file just containing the start points of each walk, to import into the car's satnav. Is there such a download available - just the start points, not the whole walk.

[stevesey]

I find Google Earth can be quite helpful if available for the location, particularly the Streetview function.

+1 for google maps/satellite views and streetview.

Streetview is great for checking such stuff out - used it last night to check a carpark entrance in Exeter for my wife - as Sat Nav showed it being in a one way system and she was concerned about missing it (was actually just in a side road). Was spotting a parking place near an M5 junction on Friday to meet friends for an (abandoned) trip to Crib Goch on Sunday (70mph gusts put us off - postponed to Friday now).

Have also explored Lakeland/Breacon roads to check out parking slots - also generally Bing uses different satellite imaginary to Google - so you get to see how busy it is on different days - and streetview then gives you a third day.

[tarbat]

So, I've made good progress in getting all the walk start points & car parks into my car satnav as "Points of Interest".

Many car satnavs can access POIs in the form of a GPX 1.1 file. So, using the very good EXTRA_POI_EDITOR program, I've started with just the start points & car parks for all the Dornoch, Brora & East Sutherland walks.

The software lets you import a CSV file in the format:
Longitude , Latitude , POI_Name , Address

So, by cutting/pasting from each walk's starting page, I created a CSV file. Opened that in EXTRA_POI_EDITOR, and verify each starting point on the map and in Streetview mode to check the car park itself, and then exported as a GPX file.

What would be useful is a downloadable file, in CSV or GPX format, of all the starting points for all the walks!!

[tarbat]

And here's an example of the CSV file for importing into EXTRA_POI_EDITOR

-4.5416,57.9715,"Raven's Rock Gorge, near Rosehall",1 boot : 1.5km : 45 minutes
-4.3901,58.023,"Gunns Wood, Lairg",1 boot : 2.25km : 40 minutes
-4.0617,57.9201,"Skelbo Forest, near Dornoch",1 boot : 2.5km : 1 hour
-3.9627,57.9792,"Big Burn, Golspie",1 boot : 2.5km : 1 hour
-4.4079,57.9602,Falls of Shin,1 boot : 3km : 1 hour
-4.4073,57.9226,Carbisdale Castle circuit,1 boot : 4km : 1 - 1.5 hours
-4.251,57.8869,Spinningdale Burn,1 boot : 4km : 1 hour 20 minutes
-4.3571,57.9035,"Balblair Forest, near Bonar Bridge",1 boot : 4.5km : 1 - 1.5 hours
-4.4066,58.0218,"Ferry Wood and the Ord, Lairg",1 boot : 5km : 1.5 - 2 hours
-4.5731,57.9804,Rosehall Forest and Achness Falls,1 boot : 6km : 2 hours
-4.0279,57.8798,Dornoch Point,1 boot : 6.5km : 2 - 2.5 hours
-4.2511,57.8869,Loch Migdale,1 boot : 7km : 2 hours round trip
-4.0177,57.935,Littleferry and Loch Fleet,1 boot : 7km : 1.5 - 2 hours
-4.0042,57.9525,Loch Fleet and Balblair Wood,1 boot : 7.5km : 2 hours
-4.028,57.88,Dornoch links and Embo circular,1 boot : 8.5km : 2.5 - 3.5 hours
-3.654,58.1171,Helmsdale Circuit,2 boot : 6km : 1.5 - 2 hours
-4.3635,57.8691,"Badvoon Forest circuit, near Ardgay",2 boot : 7km : 2 - 3 hours
-3.9757,57.9739,"Ben Bhraggie, Golspie",2 boot : 9km : 3.5 - 4.5 hours
-3.8528,58.0127,Brora to Golspie coastal walk,2 boot : 11km : 3 - 3.5 hours
-4.5905,57.8653,"Carn Chuinneag, Strath Carron, Ardgay",3 boot : 18.5km : 5.5 - 6.5 hours

[stewspyinsky]

Try a web site call uk grid finder. It allows you to convert between different formats and even has links that usually find the closest post code to most locations. Also shows the location on a map to allow you to fine tune.

[stevesey]

Also if you right click on google maps and do directions to here - it will give you the postcode - and if the you look at the address bar you'll see the lat/long grid ref of where you clicked (first set without the @ sign).