Swiss Watching trivia, No 19: Walking

August 19, 2010, 3 Comments

Collectively the Swiss spend 130 million hours a year out walking and hiking, covering the equivalent of 13,000 times round the world on foot. Given this national love of walking, it’s perhaps no surprise that the Swiss government has now published its whole catalogue of maps online, for free. Anyone can search and view any Swiss map, from a national scale (1:1.5 million) down to urban street plans (1:1000) – and, of course, walking maps. Each map can also be mixed with, or switched for, a satellite image; Google Earth, eat your heart out! But as fun as it is on screen, for hikers it’s an invaluable tool. Every walking path, or Wanderweg, is included:  yellow for normal, red for mountain. The map above might look like a blood circulatory system but it is actually all 63,779 km of footpaths in Switzerland, covering almost every inch of the country except a few mountain tops. So walkers can zoom in on any path, see it in detail (even adding in such elements as where to find wild ibex), then print out a map to take with them. Now that is a good idea from a government.