The A-Z series of town maps cover almost every town in the country, and vary in price according to size.

Ordnance Survey maps are the best if you need to find footpaths, and other details not shown on road maps. They produce three series of maps:

LANDRANGER series 1 inch to 1 mile/2cms to 1km, 1:50,000 scale. These cover every part of Britain.

OUTDOOR LEISURE series 2 inch to 1 mile/4cm to 1km, 1:25,000 scale. These cover certain popular tourist areas, at a larger scale. More detail of, for example, footpaths, is shown.

PATHFINDER SERIES 2 inch to 1 mile/4cm to 1km, 1:25,000 scale. These cover the whole country, giving details of footpaths etc. Each map is covers a smaller area than the OUTDOOR LEISURE series, but to the same scale. They are mainly for walking and footpaths.

All these maps are widely available in bookshops, Tourist Advice Centres, and many other places.

You may have difficulty buying maps in your own country. Try the nearest British Tourist Authority office to you. If you have a small map to plan your trip, you can buy a better map when you arrive.

There are town road maps available on the web, we list a few below
UK Street map

MapQuest City maps for UK and other countries British Motorway network, and the roads into London.

Roads into London

Map of London underground 'tube' train routes

Multi Media Mapping
A complete interactive atlas of Great Britain on the Web.
Just enter the name of a British city, town or village, street name (London only) or postcode to get a detailed map. You can then zoom in on any part of that map, just by clicking on the area you wish to see in more detail.

Other resources.

Stanfords, 12 Long Acre, London WC2. tel: +44 (0)171 434 4744

Two other travel bookshops in London are:

Daunt Books, 83 Marylebone High St, London W1, tel: +44 (0)171 224 2295
They stock 25,000 new and second-hand titles.

The Travel Bookshop, 12 Blenheim Crescent, London W11, tel: +44 (0)171 229 5260
Apparently a landmark in West London: "like an old-fashioned country-house library".

*if dialling from outside UK, use the '44' UK country-code, don't dial the '0'.

CD Maps

AutoRoute Express Great Britain

But it's expensive, and unless you have a laptop computer which you really want to carry around on your holidays, maybe you'd be better with a real paper map!