I have a handful of ‘current’ OS maps of Scotland, but most of my paper maps come from the ’90s, and the electronic versions I am currently using are an edition from 2016. There is lot to be said for that, as I was reminded on our walk yesterday.

From a Scottish walker’s point of view, just about the only thing of consequence in the landscape that tends to change is forestry: new forests get planted, new tracks get bulldozed in, trees get cleared. This can make a lot of difference, but is not something that traditional mapping is particularly good at keeping track of anyway, whether on paper or in an electronic form, and we are fortunate nowadays to have satellite imagery at hand — I’d neither use something like Google / Apple maps as the sole resource for planning, nor rely on them for navigation, but when heading somewhere new, it is always a good idea to consult these during the planning for such supplemental, and fairly up to date, information.

But what makes older maps particularly valuable to me is that paths and tracks (and occasionally other features of interest) have a tendency to disappear from OS maps over time. I think this is to do with the fact that tracks and paths aren’t surveyed anymore, but rather are automatically identified from satellite imagery, and many paths cannot be detected this way. This is true of paths that don’t get used much, but at times of even big tracks in maturing forests. (The other side of this coin is that popular satellite mapping tends to be over optimistic, and conjure up paths where none exit!)

The final part of our Trossachs walk yesterday included just such a path. On the paper edition of the OS map from 1994 this is marked as a forestry track, which it indeed is (it’s wide enough for a 4wd car for sure). On the 2016 edition of the map it is marked as a mere path, and on recent maps it’s gone, simply because it is now completely obscured from above by the mature trees. A recent upgrade to the forestry track it splits from has obliterated the start of it, so unless you have a map that says it’s there, you will not stumble on it.

But it is still there, and made for a delightful shaded walk accompanied by bird song, sublime light that only exists inside mature forests, and numerous crystal clear streams. (And at the end of a long day it saved us at least three kilometres of a new, oversized forestry track, recently resurfaced in preparation for logging.)

Some of these old tracks can still, or perhaps again, be found on the crowd sourced OpenStreet map, which is another excellent resource, particularly as an alternative to the crappy maps that come with Garmin devices (the Talkytoaster guy provides handy packages for use with those). Of course, people’s ideas of what constitutes a path vary, this is worth keeping in mind when using crowd sourced maps.

Talking of maps, it’s a pity that Harvey only produce a limited range of maps, their maps are excellent, if not superior to the OS maps for walking (I gather Harvey still do some amount of human surveying), though the scale switching can be confusing if using OS maps at the same time.

Anyway, hold onto your older maps, they are wort having. And if you stumble on an older map in a charity shop, consider it your lucky day, and go exploring.