Road atlas - Europe

[Chris Bertram]

We don't have a thread on this, or at least not a recent one. So, which paper road atlas would you intrepid travellers recommend purchasing for an upcoming holiday on the continent?

We're after a large size, spiral bound edition. Town plans will be useful, details of local driving regs, and so on. We'll be in a diesel motorhome, 10 plate so info on low emissions zones and how to avoid them will also help. And the Faroe Islands must have be included!

I'm aware of Philips and Michelin, but there must be others. So please recommend away ...

[rhyds]

I'd second Michelin, as they seem to be the only suppliers of decent printed and spiral bound European mapping when I was looking a few years back. That said for somewhere like the Faroes I'd look at getting a specific local map, as I doubt many of the "generalised" European maps will cover them

[FosseWay]

I use the Swedish Motormännen atlas, which I think is based on German mapping, for overall route planning and major road navigation en route. I'd agree with rhyds though that for any specific destinations (whether the Faroes or anywhere else) a dedicated large scale map of that place is the way to go.

I appreciate that the OP asked about paper maps and I agree that they serve a purpose that electronic ones don't cover so well. But I only have limited space in my house and funds in my bank account for buying paper maps, and consequently I'm quite a fan of the app TopoGPS. This allows you to purchase whole countries' coverage at typical topo scales (1:50 000 or 1:25 000 for many places). Many countries are available at a one-off charge of whatever your local equivalent of 43 SEK is - i.e. peanuts. Specifically for Chris Bertram - that includes the Faroes Just as a comparison, I bought the whole of Switzerland with Liechtenstein at 1:25 000 last summer for 43 SEK, while the same mapping on paper for Liechtenstein alone cost 20 EUR.

The one obvious country that it isn't so good for is the UK, where you either need to pay an annual subscription or you pay 10 SEK once for a small (64 km^2) bit of OS 1:25 000 mapping. The OS app is IMO better value, especially for visitors or occasional users, as you can pay per month.

[Owain]

A vote for Michelin from me too.

It's worth checking the level of detail before buying though; I've got an excellent Michelin atlas of France, but a disappointing Michelin atlas of Italy.

[RichardA35]

Last few times I've hired a car in Europe I've just relied on a mobile phone and google maps and taken an old small spiral bound road atlas (from about 1994 I think). 99% of the data was correct, just a few motorway junctions that were updated, that google knew about.

[exiled]

I am very much Collins for road atlases, but I suspect this is brand loyalty more than anything. If I need one for France I tend to go to the AA-IGN mapping.