Where our data comes from

Trekosa says who reported a thing and when it was last confirmed. The same ought to be true of the app itself, so here is everything behind it.

Most of this is public data that anybody could download. The work, and the part that took months, is getting it into one place, in agreement with itself, and knowing which questions it cannot answer.

How each of these is used on a walk, and how close something must be to count, is in how a walk is checked.

The photographs of dogs and their people on the home page are illustrations, made for this site. They are not households who use Trekosa.

One walk, measured against the sources below

Height50–100 m

100 m

Stiles, gates and grids

Beside a road

A busier road

Woodland

Water

Grazing fields

Crops

0123455.8 km

0.3 km A busier road for 500 m. Woodland for 2.3 km2.4 km A stile. Beside water for 800 m3.9 km A busier road for 500 m5.2 km The highest point, 100 m

The height, the roads, woodland, water, grazing and crops, and the stiles, gates and grids: each comes from one of the sources on this page. Joined up, they become one strip the app can show you before you set off.

The map itself

What you are looking at when you look at the map.

Ordnance Survey Leisure mappingThe base map, at the 1:25,000 Explorer detail walkers already read.Ordnance Survey. Ordnance Survey licence terms.
Esri World ImageryThe aerial view, when you switch the base map to it.Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community. ArcGIS Location Platform terms of use.
OS Open GreenspaceThe names of some parks and playing fields that OpenStreetMap leaves unnamed.Ordnance Survey. Open Government Licence v3.0.
OS Open NamesThe names of some woods that OpenStreetMap leaves unnamed.Ordnance Survey. Open Government Licence v3.0.
OS Terrain 50The hill shading and the contour lines on the Trekosa map, and the climb shown on each walk.Ordnance Survey. Open Government Licence v3.0.
OpenStreetMapPaths, tracks, roads, woodland, water, parks, gates and stiles, car parks, bins, toilets and drinking water.OpenStreetMap contributors. Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0.

Where you are allowed to walk

The legal picture, which is the part no amount of crowd-sourcing can settle.

Definitive Maps of public rights of wayFootpaths, bridleways and byways, and the legal right to be on them. A walk that has no lawful access is not offered at all.County and unitary councils. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Open access land (CRoW)Ground you may walk away from a path on, and the rules that come with some of it: land where dogs are not allowed, and times when they must be on a lead.Natural England. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Open Country (access land in Wales)Ground you may walk away from a path on in Wales, where Natural Resources Wales publishes it.Contains Natural Resources Wales information © Natural Resources Wales and Database Right. All rights Reserved. Contains Ordnance Survey Data. Ordnance Survey Licence number AC0000849444. Crown Copyright and Database Right.Natural Resources Wales. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Woods For AllWoodland that is open to walk in, either by law or because the owner allows it. Where a walk is only open by permission we say so, because permission can be withdrawn and a right cannot.Forestry Commission. Open Government Licence v3.0.
England Coast PathThe coastal route, where it is not already a right of way we hold. The path moves when the shore does, so we tell you to follow the signs on the ground rather than the line on the map.Natural England. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Public spaces protection ordersWhere dogs must be on a lead, and where they may not go. We read the sealed orders line by line rather than their titles, and we record which councils we have surveyed, so ground we have not checked says so instead of reading as unrestricted.District and borough councils. Public documents. The reading and the collation are ours.
Beaches and their dog rulesWhere a beach is, and what a council's order says about dogs on it, with the date we read it and a link to it. A beach whose rule we have not read says so, and is never shown as free of rules.OpenStreetMap contributors for the beach outlines; the councils' own orders and byelaws for the rules. Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0 and Public documents. The reading and the collation are ours.

What is on the ground

The things that decide whether a walk suits your dog.

Crop Map of EnglandGrazing and crop fields, which is how we know livestock is possible before you meet it.Rural Payments Agency. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Protected sites and nesting seasonsSites of special scientific interest and protected bird areas, including the months when dogs must be on a lead for ground-nesting birds.Natural England. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Military danger areasLive-firing ranges, which refuse a walk outright. A tag on its own is not enough, so every area is read against the MoD's own published list by name, and one that does not match is not used.OpenStreetMap contributors, checked against Ministry of Defence publications. Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0 and Public documents. The reading and the collation are ours.
Core paths and the path networkScotland's statutory paths. A core path stays open whatever the ground around it, so it is the first thing checked before any exclusion.Improvement Service, Spatial Hub Scotland, from all 32 access authorities. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Habitat Map of ScotlandWhere crops are growing and where land is built on, which are two of the places Scotland's right of access does not cover.NatureScot. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Sports groundsBowling greens, tennis courts and running tracks, which the right of access never covers.Improvement Service, Spatial Hub Scotland. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Railways and quarriesGround other laws close to the public, and working quarries.OpenStreetMap contributors. Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0.
Road traffic countsHow busy a road is, from traffic counts, not from what kind of road it is.Department for Transport. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Flood zonesGround a river or the sea reaches about once a century. After heavy rain we put the walks that stay off it first. It never stops us offering a walk.Environment Agency. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Flood zones in WalesGround a river or the sea reaches about once a century. After heavy rain we put the walks that stay off it first. It never stops us offering a walk.Contains Natural Resources Wales information © Natural Resources Wales and database right. All rights reserved. Some features of this information are based on digital spatial data licensed from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology © UKCEH. Defra, Met Office and DARD Rivers Agency © Crown copyright. © Cranfield University. © James Hutton Institute.Natural Resources Wales. Open Government Licence v3.0.

Flood maps in ScotlandGround a river or the sea reaches about once a century. After heavy rain we put the walks that stay off it first. It never stops us offering a walk.©SEPA 2025; this SEPA product is licenced under the Open Government Licence 3.0. With the third-party data SEPA lists in its Flood Map Version 3.0 Data Attribution Statements for its river and coastal flood maps.

Attribution statements in full

Flood Map Version 3.0
Data Attribution Statements
5 February 2025

The following attribution statements must be included when reusing the SEPA Products in
addition to the following SEPA required attribution statement.

©SEPA 2025; this SEPA product is licenced under the Open Government Licence 3.0.

Coastal Flood Maps
Airbus
IR Aerial Photography-©GeoPerspectives. • Digital Terrain/Surface Model- ©GeoPerspectives. •
Lidar Digital Terrain Models and Digital Surface Models- ©Infoterra Ltd.

Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd
Tide gauge data supplied by Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd

Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science
© Crown copyright, 2015

Environment Agency

This study uses data from Environment Agency provided by the British Oceanographic Data
Centre and funded by UKCFF.

European Marine Energy Centre
Wave buoy data supplied by European Marine Energy Centre Ltd

Geoinformation Group
© Cities Revealed Lidar copyright, the Geoinformation Group.

Getmapping
© Bluesky International Ltd and Getmapping Plc 2025

Intermap

Nextmap © Intermap

Marine Scotland
O'Hara Murray, R., Campbell, L. 2021. East Coast of Lewis and Harris Climatology 1.02.
https://doi.org/10.7489/12042-1

Met Office
© Crown copyright 2023, Met Office

Met Office Hadley Centre
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research (2017): UKCP09: Land and marine past
climate and future scenario projections data for the UK. Centre for Environmental Data Analysis,
2012

Met Office Hadley Centre (2018): UKCP18 Time-mean Sea Level Projections. Centre for
Environmental Data Analysis, 2021.

OceanWise
© British Crown and OceanWise, 2025. All rights reserved. License No. EK001-20140401.

1
Flood Map Version 3.0 – Data Attribution Statements

Ordnance Survey
© Crown copyright and database rights 2025 OS PSGA Member Licence.

Scottish Environment Protection Agency
© SEPA (2019)

Scottish Government
Crown Copyright Scottish Government, SEPA and Scottish Water (2012)
Crown Copyright Scottish Government and SEPA (2014)

Scottish Natural Heritage
Scottish Natural Heritage 2015

UK Hydrographic Office
Tidal data provided by the UKHO has been used under licence. ©Crown Copyright 2021, UKHO
and the Keeper of Public Records.

Maps derived from UKHO’s raw VORF data - © Crown Copyright and/or database rights.
Reproduced by permission of the Keeper of Public Records and the UK Hydrographic Office
(www.ukho.gov.uk/copyright)

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Flood Map Version 3.0 – Data Attribution Statements

River Flood Maps
Aberdeen Harbour Master
©Aberdeen Harbour Board (2014)

Aberdeenshire Lidar
Aberdeenshire Council, Aberdeen City Council, James Hutton Institute, Scottish Environment
Protection Agency (2016)

Airbus
IR Aerial Photography-©GeoPerspectives. • Digital Terrain/Surface Model- ©GeoPerspectives. •
Lidar Digital Terrain Models and Digital Surface Models- ©Infoterra Ltd.

UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Some features of this map are based on digital spatial data licensed from the UK Centre for
Ecology & Hydrology © UKCEH. Defra, Met Office and Department for Infrastructure © Crown
copyright © Cranfield University. © James Hutton Institute. Ordnance Survey data © Crown
copyright and database right 2025.

Environment Agency
Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2016. All rights reserved.

This study uses data from Environment Agency provided by the British Oceanographic Data
Centre and funded by UKCFF.

Geoinformation Group
© Cities Revealed Lidar copyright, the Geoinformation Group.

Getmapping
© Bluesky International Ltd and Getmapping Plc 2025

3
Flood Map Version 3.0 – Data Attribution Statements

National River Flow Archive
Data from the UK National River Flow Archive

Scottish Forestry
Contains Scottish Forestry information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0

Scottish Government
Crown Copyright Scottish Government, SEPA and Scottish Water (2012)

Transport Scotland
This information is published under an OGL licence. Some data is derived from information
provided by Transport Scotland under an OGL.

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Flood Map Version 3.0 – Data Attribution Statements

Scottish Environment Protection Agency. Open Government Licence v3.0.

Managed access landWho looks after the land, which decides whose rules apply on it.Forestry England and the National Trust. Open Government Licence v3.0 and Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
National Trust landThe edge of the Trust's open and limited-access land, drawn in mulberry. Land the Trust keeps always open counts as ground the public may walk when we judge a walk. The Trust says its map is drawn at about 1:50,000, was last audited in 2017, and is not meant to show ownership boundaries. Changed: clipped to a county, edges thinned.National Trust. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
Public toiletsToilets, alongside the ones in OpenStreetMap.The Great British Public Toilet Map. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
Bus and rail stopsGetting to a walk without a car.Department for Transport (NaPTAN). Open Government Licence v3.0.
Country parksWhere a country park in England lies, outlined and named on the map, and counted as ground the public may walk when we judge a walk.Natural England. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Ferry crossingsWhere a ferry crosses, its name, who runs it, whether it takes foot passengers, and the crossing time where the map gives one.OpenStreetMap contributors. Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0.
Fords, waterfalls and other places on the wayFords, waterfalls, footbridges, castles, abbeys, lighthouses, windmills, visitor centres, hostels and camp sites, named on the map and found by searching their name.OpenStreetMap contributors, and OS Open Names for waterfalls. Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0 and Open Government Licence v3.0.
Sand, dune, shingle, mud and other groundThe ground a coast or a moor is made of, drawn on the map: sand, dunes, shingle, mud, wetland, scree, bare rock, quarries and golf courses.OpenStreetMap contributors; Natural England's habitat map for England's sand, dune, shingle and mud. Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0 and Open Government Licence v3.0.
Named walking routes and Scotland's Great TrailsThe long-distance and local routes that have a name and a number, and Scotland's Great Trails. The list of Great Trails is the official one; the lines on our map are OpenStreetMap's, not NatureScot's.OpenStreetMap contributors. Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0.
Phase 1 habitat survey of WalesMoor, heath and bog in Wales, so ground like that is not read as plain grass.Natural Resources Wales. Open Government Licence v3.0.

Working things out

Services we call rather than data we hold.

openrouteserviceSnapping a line you draw onto real paths.Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology. openrouteservice terms of service.
Open-MeteoThe weather forecast shown beside a walk.Open-Meteo. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
postcodes.io and OS NamesTurning a postcode or a place name into somewhere on the map.Ideal Postcodes and Ordnance Survey. Open Government Licence v3.0.

Walkers

The part that cannot be bought, and the reason the rest is worth having.

What people reportWhen somewhere is quiet, what has changed, what is closed, what the map did not know. Every claim carries a count and the date it was last confirmed. None of it is ever put on a public page, sold, or handed on.Households using Trekosa. Given to us in confidence, and never published.

How the figures on our place pages are made

Every county and town page draws its figures from the walks we have measured there. A walk is measured from the map, not from walking: a stile, a wood or a road is where the map says it is. Each page gives the date its figures were measured.

Every share is rounded down to a whole percent, and every count down to ten, so a page can only understate. Where the map holds nothing for a walk, we cannot fail it on that check, so it passes.

Farm grassland in England comes from the Rural Payments Agency's crop map, which records the grass and not the animals on it. Wales and Scotland have no crop map, so farm grassland there is read from habitat surveys (the Phase 1 survey in Wales, the Habitat Map of Scotland), which are not directly comparable with England's figures. What people report on the ground is added walk by walk, with a date.

The three walks on a town's page are the ones that start nearest its middle: one loop, one there and back and one one-way walk, and where there are enough, one short, one middling and one longer, at least a kilometre apart in length. A county page takes its three from its largest towns. They are listed the way the app lists them, and where each one goes is in the app, with a free account.

Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database rights 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.

What we do not do with it

We do not publish route pages, and we never will. What a household tells us about a walk stays behind an account, is never sold or passed on, and does not become a page for anybody to find. The fastest way to spoil a quiet path is to tell everybody it is quiet.

If you publish one of the datasets above and something here is wrong, or the credit is not how you would like it written, tell us at hello@trekosa.com and we will put it right.

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