The Joy of Maps

Maps are great! Plan your route, see where you've been, look for those tightly packed contours that mean slopes!

Up till a couple of years ago, when it came to on-line mapping, I would have advised people who had the money (or the means) to acquire Memory Map, the magic pc software that had not only licensed 1:25,000 OS mapping, but also 3D visualisers to see the whole thing; hills, valleys, the whole undulating landscape.  It was good.  It is still good, if very, very expensive, but with a whole host of free information available at your finger tips on-line, it'd be daft not to look there first.

Road maps, OS maps, satellite imagery, birds eye views,terrain view, street view, route planning and a whole lot more to follow (in no particular order and with emphasis on off road 4x4 wheely boarding):

Multi Map - demo available here

Google Maps

Probably the best known mapping website available possibly due to the ease of adding user information to the maps and ease of integration into other websites.

Best used to highlight points of interest i.e. people, places
Very good satallite imagery
Terrain view: Handy to give rough idea of terrain but only really effective zoomed out or in really hilly areas
Very good road maps in order to get to where you were going in the first place


Bing Maps (was Live Search)

Alternative to Google Maps, but has some great alternative features (particularly after the update on the 12th November 2009):

Contains OS maps at both 1:50,000 and 1:25,000. (very easy to flick between the two)
Alternative Satalite Imagery and Bird eye Views (not all areas).

These two features alone makes desktop trail hunting a lot easier.  From using the OS maps to find a suitable slope, it is a breeze to switch to the birds eye view to see whether that route goes straight through a field, wood, or trading estate.

Of course, there's still the possibility of getting to site and finding that the trail is totally un-ridable, or densely packed with cattle, or just plain rubbish.

Where's the Path

...is genius!  OS Map on one side, Satellite view is on the other.  Moving the cursor on one side is replicated at the same spot on the other.  Paths drawn on one site are replicated on the other!   Always worth a look just in case you suspect that either the map lies, or when you suspect that you are allowed access through a particular piece of ground. 

OS Maps are unfortunately only in 1:50,000 but there if you select the 25k button, then select a spot, then that location is opened in Streetmap at 1:25:000.  GPS logs can be imported / exported accordingly.

Google Earth

Downloadable application displaying satellite views of the world in all its glory.  Has the ability to show the terrain in 3D, though its only accurate to points every 50 metres or so.  This can result for example in valleys not displaying as the 50 metre points span the gap, or in peaks of hills not quite in the right location.

Other maps websites include:
Multimap
Streetmap
Flash Earth
Strangemaps

Hope this information be helpful, though I've got a feeling that I'll have to update it all in 3 months!