Top Scottish walks website on your phone

Walkhighlands (www.walkhighlands.co.uk) aims to boost Scottish tourism and encourage walking by publishing online guides and mapping; featuring over 1,350 routes, it is Scotland’s busiest outdoors website. The ViewRanger App turns smartphones into a complete countryside guide with GPS, maps, navigation and location sharing. The app is available for iphones, Android and most Symbian (including most Nokia) smartphones, as well as ipads. The two companies have teamed up to make Walkhighlands routes available within the ViewRanger app, so now walkers can download detailed routes direct to their phones.

“Our routes offer walks for all tastes from challenging ascents up the Munros to walks through Caledonian pinewoods or hikes exploring Scotland’s spectacular coastline,” said Walkhighlands co-founder Paul Webster. “ViewRanger is a superb and ground-breaking app. Users can purchase premium mapping such as location-aware Ordnance Survey maps which – like the routes – remain available even there is no signal – crucial for use in many parts of Scotland. We’re delighted to be able to offer Walkhighlands routes through ViewRanger.”

To help you get started over the forthcoming bank holidays, ViewRanger are offering four free routes to every registered user until 2nd May. To get free routes all you have to do is install the ViewRanger app on your smartphone (just 59p for Apple iPhone or use the 15-day free trial for Android and Symbian) and register. Then browse the routes, and the first four paid routes from any publisher will be delivered at no charge. The promotion runs over the period Sunday 17th April to Monday 2nd May, giving you a few days before Easter to select routes.

1. Safety in the Hills. The ViewRanger app is a wonderful aid to making navigation easier and more enjoyable, but a traditional map and compass should still be always carried.

2. The free routes promotion runs over the period Sunday 17th April to Monday 2nd May covering the Easter, Royal Wedding and early Spring 2011 bank holidays: Good Friday April 22, Easter Monday April 25, Royal Wedding April 29, May Day May 2.

3. The free offer covers all standard routes (excl Hadrian’s wall Video & Guides incl mapping) from ViewRanger for all registered customers (includes those using the 15 day free trial over the period). The first 4 paid routes from any publisher will be delivered at no charge. Subsequent routes during the period will be charged as normal. A customer with a zero credit balance can benefit from the 4 free routes providing that they are registered. Customers who do not download all 4 routes before 2nd May will not be able to access the offer after this date. The normal value of routes varies between about 50p to £2.00; Walkhighlands routes cost £1.50.

Based in the Cairngorms National Park, the multiple award-winning website Walkhighlands aims to encourage the enjoyment of walking and increase tourism in Scotland through provision and information and social networking facilities for walkers.

Walkhighlands is the busiest outdoors website in Scotland, with 8,000 visitors each day viewing around 3 million pages of information each month. The site has won the prestigious VisitScotland Thistle Award for Innovation, as well as being the overall winner at the inaugural HeraldScotland Digital Business Awards and a double winner at the last Highlands and Islands Tourism Awards.

Press contact: Helen Webster, 01479 873523

Augmentra Ltd is the Cambridge UK based Angel funded software development company behind ViewRanger, the award winning mobile app, which delivers Mapping, Navigation, GPS- enabled guides & route content and Location Sharing to anyone who wants to get more from their time in the Great Outdoors.

The App runs on a massive range of smartphones and devices that use the Apple iOS (iPhone/iPad), Android, or Symbian OS and works virtually anywhere in the world using web based mapping, which can be cached for off-line use. Additionally, it can upgraded to run premium topographic map data like Ordnance Survey maps in Great Britain, for a growing number of countries, including Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, parts of Italy, Norway, New Zealand, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland & USA.

ViewRanger is also a GPS-enabled content publishing platform that allows guidebook & route owners such as Walkhighlands to deliver their content directly to a user’s smartphone.

Press Contact: For UK distribution, Clive Allen at Ascent Marketing Communications 01539 739995 and [email protected]