A COMPREHENSIVE study of the most popular places to create walking routes has revealed that Cumbria is home to two of the top 10 destinations.

Ordnance Survey’s analysis of almost 400,000 public routes created over the past 12 months in the digital map and planning tool, OS Maps, has revealed the most popular destinations to create routes for.

OS, by breaking the country down into square kilometres and counting the number of routes passing through each square, has produced a league table that sees the Edale area of the Peak District occupying six of the top 10 spots, with Snowdon’s summit comfortably taking the top spot by some distance.

The Lake District’s Scafell Pike summit and Ambleside appear at number three and five respectively.

OS has created another league table to establish the most popular towns and cities to create routes in. To conduct the analysis OS has looked at the full extent of the towns and cities rather than the square kilometre method, hence why Ambleside, which appears in both tables, has two different number of routes.

1km Grid Squares with number of routes going through that square

Grid square, location, number of routes:

SH6054 Snowdon (Summit) 3,779

SK1285 Edale 3,590

NY2107 Scafell Pike (Summit) 3,007

SK0786 Edale Cross 2,636

SK0886 Edale (Jacob’s Ladder) 2,632

NY3704 Ambleside 2,587

SH6154 Snowdon (Pyg Track) 2,581

SK1283 Edale (Mam Tor) 2,529

SK1384 Edale (Hollins Cross) 2,492

SK1185 Edale 2,452

SO0121 Pen y Fan 2,404

SH6455 Pen-y-pass 2,377

NY2806 Langdale Fell (Cumbria Way) 2,359

NY2208 Great End (Scafell Pike) 2,342

NY3307 Grasmere (Centre) 2,311

SK1085 Edale (Upper Booth) 2,298

SK1284 Edale (Cold Side) 2,288

NY2308 Allen Crags (Scafell Pike) 2,278

NY3415 Helvellyn (Summit) 2,271

NY2623 Keswick 2,244

Top 10 cities and towns and number of routes

Ambleside 2,731

Keswick 2,523

Richmond upon Thames 1,278

Bath 1,234

Sheffield 1,205

Wandsworth 1,169

Winchester 1,147

Guildford 1,140

Bakewell 1,091

Church Stretton 1,003.

About Ordnance Survey

Britain’s mapping agency, Ordnance Survey makes the most up-to-date and accurate digital and paper maps of the country.

Each day OS makes over 10,000 changes to its database of more than 500 million geographic features.

Since 1791 OS content has been used to help governments, companies and individuals work more effectively both here and around the world.

The information OS gathers helps keep the nation, economy and infrastructure moving.