Hello,
I thought I'd try some more serious walking, starting with a day outing and building up to overnighting somewhere. The current plan involves hopping on a train early in the morning with plenty of food and water and heading back home for dinner. I'll build up the distances and then look for a camp site at a halfway point. I've got sturdy boots, a decent rucksack, waterproof, compass, etc, but am aware I need a few more things still (like a map!).
Does this sound sensible? I've done loops locally, gone out geocaching and done walks on holidays, and I'm not going to try anything silly on the early walks until I figure out how far you really can go in a day on footpaths!
Now route planning. I pick a train station, say Frome, and head back to Bath. Google gives me 13.4 miles but mostly on roads: http://goo.gl/maps/XEFeA. Is it simply the case of getting an OS map or two and marking the route? Any good website that use the OS map / OpenStreetMap data and can keep you off the road mostly? OSM does have the nice cycle map option, do any sites/apps use the map data and let you turn on and off different path/road types? I've found a couple of options with my searches but they don't seem to work. I can at least see I can get most of the way off-road when out of towns which is nice
Thanks!