Paper map and phone: using both without fuss

A phone is a remarkable map, a timetable, a camera and a way to say you are late. It is also a battery, a glare in sunshine, a brick in the rain, and a blue dot that will happily walk you across a crop if you let it. Paper is quieter and harder to break. The calm arrangement is to let each do the job it is actually good at, and to decide that arrangement before you are cold.

What the paper is for

The OS sheet shows the paths, the boundaries, the contours and the ground around the route, including the ground you will be on if you miss a turn. It works with gloves, in cloud, and after you have taken one photograph too many. Fold it to the relevant square, put it in a plastic sleeve if the forecast is wet, and keep it somewhere you will actually open. A map at the bottom of the sack is a souvenir.

Learn the route on that sheet the night before. Reading an OS map is the skill. The phone cannot supply the skill. It can only supply a picture and a dot.

What the phone is for

Use the phone for the things paper does badly. A bus departure, a weather update before you lose signal, a message home, a grid reference if you want to confirm a bridge, a photograph of a junction you can compare with the paper. Download the map area before you leave the house, because the pretty valley is often the place with no reception. Start the day with a full battery, and carry a small power bank if the walk is long and the phone is also your ticket home.

Cold kills batteries faster than the manufacturer implies. Keep the phone in an inner pocket, not in a mesh pocket in the wind. A wet phone in a hip belt is how a helper becomes a problem. The pocket system in what belongs in a hip-belt pocket has a place for it only if that place is dry.

The blue dot and the right of way

A location dot is useful when you are honestly unsure which field you are in. It is a poor leader. Apps draw desire lines, old tracks and routes that are not rights of way. If the dot suggests a shortcut across a meadow and the paper shows the path along the hedge, walk the hedge. The Countryside Code is not updated by software.

At each junction, look at the ground and the paper first. Then, if you still disagree with yourself, glance at the phone. The order matters. People who lead with the phone stop seeing walls. People who never check it walk past the stile that the hedge has swallowed. Use the glance as a referee, not as a driver.

When one of them fails

Phones fail in ordinary ways: a drop, a puddle, a battery, a glove that cannot type a passcode, a screen you cannot read in rain. If the phone dies, the paper should already be the map you are on, so nothing important changes. If you have come out with only the phone, you do not have that comfort. That is the argument for paper, stated as plainly as possible.

Paper fails when it is the wrong sheet, when it blows away, or when you cannot relate it to the ground. A compass still works in that second failure, which is why compass basics belong in the same pocket as the sheet on any hill that can cloud over. The phone's compass is a bonus and a battery.

A fuss-free pocket routine

Paper in the jacket or the sleeve. Phone zipped, on a lower brightness, with the map downloaded. At a stile, one look, then walk. In the pub, you may admire the route you recorded. On the hill, the recording is the least interesting thing you are doing.

If you walk with someone who prefers the other tool, agree who is navigating. Two people correcting each other from two different screens is how a simple lane becomes an argument. One navigator, two sources, no fuss.

Frequently asked questions

Is a phone app enough on a waymarked lowland walk?

Often it works, until it does not. A printed sheet or even a carefully copied sketch, plus the OS map for the area, is a cheap insurance. The day you need it will not announce itself.

How do I keep paper usable in the rain?

A sleeve, a fold that shows the current square, and a habit of opening it under your jacket. A soggy full sheet in the wind is the argument for folding before the weather arrives.

Should I follow my recorded track back?

Only if that track was on rights of way and you are happy to retrace it. A recorded wander into the wrong field is a poor thing to repeat. The paper route is the cleaner way home.