Digital maps are all well and good, but sometimes you just can’t beat the real thing. It’s hard to beat spreading an OS sheet out over a table and pondering where to go (or where you’ve been) with the aid of tea and biscuits. For all the cunning interactivity of digital mapping, sometimes you just want to be able to see 600 square miles of countryside all at once and trace your route with nothing more sophisticated than a finger. Which is, in a sense, “digital mapping”, but we digress.

One of the drawbacks of paper maps is the whole paper thing. It’s not the most robust or weatherproof of materials – you don’t see all that many paper jackets in use on the hills. You can stick your map in some sort of holder, but it starts to get bulky and inevitably the bit you want to look at ends up folded inside. Several companies specialise in laminating standard maps to keep them happy even in wet (or indeed sweaty – stuffing a paper map in a jersey pocket for a long ride on a hot day is a good way to turn it into a pulpy mess) conditions, but now Ordnance Survey is doing laminated maps itself.

The Explorer Active maps come ready-coated in a thin plastic layer that shrugs off water and is hard to tear. 180 of the most popular 1:25,000 scale maps will be available in the new format – if you want one of the other 222 maps in the series then it’s back to the third-party laminators. Or indeed if you want a 1:50,000 scale Landranger. Explorers are great for, well, exploring, though, so this is a more than welcome addition to the OS range.