12-Sep-2026 — import your OS Maps routes as GPX from the walks admin area ref #99

build 936 — commit ec980a5

How-to guide: Planning and following walk routes — drawing a route on the map, generating and editing the directions that go with it, importing from OS Maps, and following a walk on a phone.

What's new

Routes you have drawn or bookmarked in OS Maps can now be brought into the site as GPX files without touching OS Maps yourself. Walks admin has a new OS Maps Routes page: load your routes from the OS Maps account, search the list, tick the ones you want and convert them to GPX. Routes that have already been imported stay marked so it is obvious what is still to do next time, and the list can be narrowed to just those not yet imported.

Converting several routes now signs into OS Maps once for the whole job instead of once per route, which roughly halves the time a multi-route job takes.

While a conversion runs, the page switches to its own Job progress tab, so the list of routes stays where it was and the progress log is no longer stuck at the bottom of the page. The job carries on whichever tab you are looking at, and the routes list refreshes itself when the job finishes. Job progress also has a session picker, so a conversion from last week can be looked at as easily as the one running now, complete with its report. Nothing was ever being thrown away - there simply was not a way to reach it before.

If a job is stuck or no longer wanted, Stop job ends it and hands the page back in a usable state, even if the machine running it has already gone. A job that never reports back is now given up on after twelve minutes rather than forty-five.

Once a route is imported it can be attached to a walk, or opened on the Follow screen straight from the routes list.

At a glance