os maps of switzerland and greenlane/wild camping laws?

[nobber]

anyone know where i can get os maps of switzerland showing green lanes / tracks etc?
also does anyone know the score on wild camping / off roading in switzerland?

[adafish]

take it ya off on another jaunt Rob....nice one...I'm looking at attending the Dutch 20th Anniversary do in May, something different and overland travel...:rolleyes:

[AJC]

Nobber,

OS is a British Grid Ref and when I was in Switzerland in 2006, I was told wild camping was illegal - recognised camp sites only.

AJ

[AnalogKid]

This is the country that has banned motor racing (although seem to find it acceptable to be represented in A1GP) and all 2 strokes I seem to remember. I think you'll be shot for walking on the grass, let alone driving on it. Good luck.

[Roger Whittle]

anyone know where i can get os maps of switzerland showing green lanes / tracks etc?
also does anyone know the score on wild camping / off roading in switzerland?

Sorry Rob, you won't find maps as good as Ordnance Survey maps anywhere in the world and Andy is probably right - the Swiss hate cars; officially - and they might shoot you for even thinking about driving anywhere except the perfectly trimmed and preened roads. :D

Remember, every male over the age of seventeen and under seventy not only has a gun, but a serious gun - real banging machinery. :eek:

Roger.

[bvudzichena]

Sorry Rob, you won't find maps as good as Ordnance Survey maps anywhere in the world...

*/ clearing throat /*

I had huge trouble getting my head around OS maps - having used 1:50,000 topo maps since I was about 10 years old and first went into the bush.

We went camping in Nyanga in Zimbabwe several years ago (in the days when BMATT were still out there training the Zim army) and ran into some GB officers up in the mountains who were about as lost as they could be. Their GPS was in the mountain shadow and none of them could figure out where they were on the 1:50K.

I know you guys would have cut your teeth on OS maps and obviously stll use them, but what happens when the military goes off on campaigns outside of the UK? Do OS make special maps of the foreign territories for the soldiers?

If truth be known, I still don't understand the way they work.

[alex]

This is the country that has banned motor racing (although seem to find it acceptable to be represented in A1GP) and all 2 strokes I seem to remember. I think you'll be shot for walking on the grass, let alone driving on it. Good luck.

Yes Andy. This is the country that dumps all of it`s dirty manufacturing processes in poorer countries for fear of dirtying their own. I know there are logistics involved but I could go on with their "dirty" record.

The last time I did some Wild Camping someone groped my wife.....another guy stole my weed........and while dancing I stood on my Banjo:D

Alex

[AnalogKid]

Bvudzi,

OS maps can be 1:50,000 topos. The 1:25,000 are much better though. I think the 1:25K are derived from the 1:5000 surveys with detail degraded as the scale requires, and the 1:50,000 are based on there own survey. They're pretty clear for most UK situations, but lack any real detail of the exact terrain when you're following mountain tracks into the heads of valleys or through boggy moors, and a little artistic shading of the releif would help most non-map readers get their heads around reading the contours.

As for when the forces go overseas, they can be pretty resourceful. I reckon its someones job to keep an up to date catalogue of pretty much the whole globe at suitable scales. These days all you need is some old mapping to fix some datum points to a particular projection and grid system, then remote sensing techniques can deliver very accurate, up-to-date mapping of any given area. No one who knows just how accurate military satellite imagery is will be prepared to state the facts on an open forum, but there's more than one way to crack a nut. I've seen late 70s/early 80s Russian maps of the UK, Chile and China and I'm pretty sure they got a lot of the detail from interpreting air photos taken from Mig25 Foxbats. Using stereo pair photos and enough datum points you can plot contours to a high degree of accuracy, as well as plotting all the communications, water courses and settlements etc.

Roger,
I reckon the NZ topo maps are as good as the OS, but are in annoyingly small sheet sizes, and even then you end up buying huge amounts of sea on some of the sheets. I also reckon the Dutch and German topos are really good, but a totally different presentation style, and again, small sheets. I think what's really unusual about the OS is that it was set up as a military division but has made its surveys available to the public for a long time, where in most other countries the public mapping is undertaken by private survey companies and the military stuff is kept secret.

[bvudzichena]

Andy,

Does NZ have anything like this (http://www.tracks4africa.co.za/) with maps that can be uploaded onto a Garmin?

[AnalogKid]

Not sure actually, I've not looked into it because I've not bought a GPS handset yet.

There are loads of parties interested in GPS in NZ, and one of the manufactures also makes paper maps, so I'm sure they have something available.

I'm the kind of saddo though that would just love to spend hours digitising existing maps into datasets for each trip I go on. Maybe its best I don't get a GPS, I've already got far more pass times than I I have time to pass.

[Irish/Rover]

anyone know where i can get os maps of switzerland showing green lanes / tracks etc?
also does anyone know the score on wild camping / off roading in switzerland?

The Swiss do have a healthy interest in Land Rovers and off roading. So ask them about maps of their country. Try the Land Rovers of Switzerland club at www.lros.ch

Geoff

[nobber]

nice one Geoff , cheers fella.

[baz]

As AK mentioneed above the clue to hte origin of the OS maps is the name. Hence most westernised countries have them but not with the same public availability.
Interesting OS snippet: at the fall of Singapore in WW2 the OS had just completed a new survey of the Malayan peninsular and prepared colour plates which the Japanese therefore acquired. The Allies only had the old black and white plates.

[130Dreamer]

Switzerland do have mapping similar to the UK OS maps. I have a number of 1:25,000 maps which are of similar design to OS but have relief shading so are in some ways better. Stanfords in London have a very large selection of Swiss maps and their website is fairly comprehensive (www.stanfords.co.uk (http://www.stanfords.co.uk)).
Whilst I have seen a number of off road tracks in Switzerland I haven't driven any so I can't be of any help on that front!