In 2001, the Travelmaster series was discontinued and split into two new series: the Great Britain Routeplanner map at 1:625 000, and the ‘Road Map’ series at 1:250 000 scale. The ‘Road Map’ series was born in April 2001, with the simultaneous publication of 8 sheets covering Great Britain. These were effectively re-issues of Travelmaster sheets 2-9, renumbered and rebranded as Road Map sheets 1-8.

Figure 1 Road Map 8 Edition A (Apr 2001)

Figure 2 Travel Map - Road 6 Edition B (Feb 2003)

Designed with the motorist in mind, each sheet was issued in a variant of the 1996 ‘house style’ cover design, with a ‘British racing green’ background colour. As first published, these maps retailed for £3.95, although the price rose in November 2001 to £3.99. (Figure 1)

New editions of each sheet were published in February 2003, rebranded as part of the ‘Travel Map’ range. The ‘Travel Map - Road’ series now bore covers in the new style (Figure 2), a variant of the design first issued on the Landranger series the year before.

In early 2004, the retail price of ‘Travel Map - Road’ maps rose to £4.99.

Figure 3 Travel Map - Road 8 Edition C (Mar 2005)

Figure 4 Travel Map - Road 6 Edition D (Mar 2007)

A set of new editions of all 8 sheets, published in March 2005, had more ‘arty’ photographs on the covers. (Figure 3)

Another set of new editions of all 8 sheets were published in March 2007, featuring aerial photographs of roads, landmarks and coastal features on the covers. (Figure 4)

The final editions of the ‘Travel Map - Road’ maps were published in March 2009.

In Autumn 2009 Ordnance Survey took the decision that the majority of the ‘Travel Map’ range could no longer compete with other companies’ similar products and satellite navigation devices. Thus to improve cost-efficiency, the ‘Travel Map - Road’ series was discontinued at the end of January 2010, along with ‘Travel Map - Route’ and fifteen of the 23 sheets in the ‘Travel Map - Tour’ series.

Page last updated: 25 February 2010