The maps of the walking routes included in the Walk Index of this website use OpenStreetMap (OSM) which "is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world." Wikipedia

These maps are freely available to use although, as stated at the foot each map on this website, they are subject to "map data copyright OpenStreetMap & contributors CC-BY-SA".

The advantage of using OSM is that it provides a very good overall map of an area and there is no ongoing cost to use OSM mapping data as a basis for illustrating a walking routes.

A disadvantage is occasionally in some of the detail. All data is supplied by collaborators who may possibly have used out of date data, by reference to old maps (road and place names), and may have included tracks and paths regardless of current ownership, permissions and Rights-of-Way. On the other hand, there are some legitimately useable tracks and paths in West Norfolk, which the author of this website is aware of, which are not shown.

Another disadvantage is in the way that they displayed in this website by means of an image. While short walks will reproduce the detailed information available from OSM, longer routes show a condensed image to fit into the web page and therefore lose some of this detail. Zooming in, or panning, to reveal more detail is not possible with the OSM image. A clearer version of the map image can be viewed in a new web page by a right-click (with mouse) or two-finger touch (on a touch-pad or touch-screen) on the image, and selecting "Open image in a new tab". This will not reveal any more detailed mapping information but possibly a larger, and certainly a clearer image, will be available in the new tab.

Some of these problems can be by-passed by downloading the GPX File of the walking route, available from the walk index page on this website, and viewing it using mapping software such as RouteConverter which is free to download onto your own computer. You will then be able to view a more detailed version of the OSM map which can be panned and zoomed-in to. The RouteConverter software has been used to create this website as described here.