Where our data comes from

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.
• OpenStreetMapPaths, tracks, roads, woodland, water, parks, gates and stiles, car parks, bins, toilets and drinking water.OpenStreetMap contributors. Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0.

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 seasonal restrictions that come with some of it.Natural England. 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 Where a walk is only open by permission we say so, because permission can be withdrawn and a right cannot.Forestry Commission.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.

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.
• Road traffic countsHow busy a road actually is, measured rather than guessed from its classification.Department for Transport. Open Government Licence v3.0.
• Flood zonesGround that floods, so a riverside path in February is not offered as though it were June.Environment 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.
• 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.

Services we call rather than data we hold.

• openrouteserviceSnapping a line you draw onto the paths that are actually there.Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology. openrouteservice terms of service.
• Open-MeteoHow much climbing a walk involves.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.

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.

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.