Discovery Walking Guides ENews
  September 2014
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It's been a pretty good summer in many parts of the UK and it looks like there might be a bit more to come before the inevitable slide into darker, cooler days begins. If you have the luxury of taking a break when it suits you, this would be the perfect time to pop over to the Isle of Wight. Summer visitors have all but gone, leaving those wonderful cliffs, coastlines, villages and countryside quiet yet still warm enough.

If you need a full-on fix of sunshine to escape the winter, we would suggest favourite destinations such as Tenerife Lanzarote or Madeira

If you want good sunny days, gentle temperatures and great walking somewhere a bit less mainstream, have a look at La Gomera La Palma or Gran Canaria.

We’ll be adding Fuerteventura maps to our list in 2015 – see more details below.

ISLE OF WIGHT

Walk! The Isle of Wight (3rd edition) now available
ISBN 9781782750024
Published August 2014 £12.99

The popularity of the Isle of Wight with walkers seems to grow every year. Our second edition of Walk! The Isle of Wight sold out faster than expected, so we asked author Martin Simons to make a re-research visit ahead of our updated third edition.

What’s new in the third edition?
  • Bus information for getting to and from some walks has been updated.
  • The layout has been made easier on the eye and photos have been enlarged.
  • New to this third edition is a place names index.
If you already have a 2nd edition, you won’t need to buy this new edition; the changes to the text can be found on our website. See the changes we’ve made  HERE.

Isle of Wight – digital products for Garmin users

Lots of hikers are fans of the Isle of Wight, not just for its walking festival (this year sponsored by Garmin) but for all-year walking. If you were there at this year’s festival you’ll have noticed that Garmin gps units were issued to all walk leaders, some of whom actually used them. These were the new series of mapping gps units, into which you can load your own maps, using the Custom Maps facility. This then gives you ‘Real Time’ mapping navigation on your map of choice. Once you’ve used a ‘Real Time’ mapping gps you won’t want to go back to a basic gps; Garmin* mapping units eTrex20/30 Oregon600/650 amongst others.
 
Isle of Wight ‘OSlike’ Custom Map £3.99 is a 25k scale map similar to Ordnance Survey but with all the 40 ‘Walk! the Isle of Wight’ walking routes highlighted and numbered. Load into your Garmin* then load the gpx waypoint file(s) and you have real time mapping navigation for each of Martin’s adventures.Our Isle of Wight Adventure Package (£11.99) comprises:-
  • Isle of Wight ‘OSlike’ Custom Map
  • the gpx waypoint files for all 40 walking routes of Walk! the Isle of Wight
  • 40 A4-sized Route Cards in pdf format, giving the detailed walking route descriptions for each of the 40 walking adventures.
The data is prepared as a zip file. If you’re using a Garmin mapping gps, then our Adventure Package might be more to your liking than buying Walk! The Isle of Wight and the Custom Map separately. For more details see HERE.

FUERTEVENTURA -  A NEW DESTINATION FOR 2015

In all the years (25+) that we lived in the Canary Islands we never got to Fuerteventura for one reason or another, the main reason being that there was little happening on the big desert island; even the Spanish Foreign Legion pulled out and moved to Tenerife. But that was back in the 80/90s and since that time, tourist facilities have expanded like topsy.

So finally we are going to Fuerteventura in January 2015 to carry out an extensive ground survey as the basis for new maps for the island.

Fuerteventura is a big island, over 1,600 sq kms, so our plan is to produce an ‘island touring map’ on one side that will include all the latest roads and drivable tracks along with bus routes and all those essential features such as petrol stations, out of town refreshment stops, tourist attractions. Our map sheet size is 84cm by 70cm, that will fold down to a pocketable 12cm wide by 22cm high using our specialist map fold that makes it easy to unfold, and more importantly, to fold up again – if you’ve used paper maps such as Kompass with their complicated folding technique you’ll know that our ‘specialist map fold’ will save you lots of frustration, not to mention that it’ll last longer. This map sheet size will mean a 100k scale ‘island touring map’ on one side of the map sheet. On the reverse we plan to produce larger scale map sections of the main resorts along with walking routes where these exist, along with all the useful information we can fit in. All of this will be produced as a Super-Durable Map printed on Polyart, that will shrug off the hard use it’ll get on the windiest of the Canary Islands.

We’d like your help in deciding what information should be included on our new Fuerteventura map. What would you like to see included – such as the location of Guanche remains, of which Fuerteventura has more than any other island, most of them unprotected. As with Gran Canaria (Rambling Roger) we’d like to work with a local walker/hiker so as to present the best walking on the island. And, as with Rambling Roger, we are happy to promote, or consider publishing, their publications/services.
All ideas and suggestions are much appreciated, so email us at
ask.discovery@ntlworld.com with your ideas and suggestions.

Happy adventuring,
David & Ros

DWG Ltd 10 Tennyson Close, Northampton NN57HJ