New online journey walking planner set up to show how to connect to John O'Groats Trail
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The Friends of the John O'Groats Trail have announced the launch of an online walking journey planner.
The free tool allows walkers to plan any part of their journey from Land’s End to John O’Groats.
The John O’Groats Trail itself is a 147 mile coastal walking route from Inverness to the Caithness village and is being established by the Association of Northern Trails Scotland.
Association chairman Jay Wilson, a Berriedale resident, and JoG Trail website designer Stuart Turner, who is based on the Isle of Arran, set up the new journey planner.
Mr Wilson said: “This web planner tool is a little project we put together over the past year in our spare time. It partly grew out of the trail project because we want people from the rest of Britain to know how to connect their walk to the trail.
“We also wanted to provide a way for people to plan long distance walks, because there was no existing tool for this. There are many tools for driving trips, like google maps, but not so much for walkers.
“And most trail maps online only show trails in Scotland or in England and Wales, but not all of Britain."
He added: "We think that during lockdown people need ways to go for 'virtual walks' and to plan trips to give them something to look forward to. With everyone stuck close to home, it’s nice to get your mind out and about."
The data for individual trails was already online but it needed to be divided up to allow users to select parts of different trails.
Mr Wilson said: "Each trail selected gets put in a “shopping basket” list that represents the whole route.
"Stuart thought of all kinds of clever ideas like being able to drag a trail in the list to reorder it, and once the list is done, being able to have the whole route emailed to the user."
Access the planner at: www.lejogplanner.uk
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