Map app for France

By Cycling UK
Do you have knowledge of the Maverick Android app? My app has OSM cycle map pre-loaded, but I would like to be able to have IGN or Michelin as well. Do you know if it is possible to get either of these maps on Maverick?

David Holdsworth

I don’t know Maverick, but from what I’ve discovered it doesn’t look as good as Maps With Me, a similar app I use on my phone. All these free or very cheap apps get their maps for nothing from the Open Street Map (OSM) and Google etc. Which is good in parts, but France has a lot of little roads, many of which have yet to be charted by OSM contributors. So there are gaps in the apps that come free. So we yearn for good old commercial mapping, which is made by cartographers, who need to get paid!

I don’t rely on my phone for cycling navigation (a proper GPS does it better), but if I did I would get the Viewranger app (a basic, OSM-mapped version of which can be used for free) and buy commercial maps where OSM isn’t good enough yet. Viewranger has arrangements with many commercial map publishers and for only £41.66 you can download IGN ‘Top-100’ mapping for the whole of France. That’s 1cm = 1km scale, perfect for cycling with contours and everything. Not free, but excellent value, I think.

Chris Juden

 

This was first published in the August / September 2014 edition of CTC's Cycle magazine.

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