Andrew Denton, chief executive of the Outdoor Industries Association. Photo: Bob Smith/grough

A campaign by an outdoor industry trade body to persuade the British public to take up activities in the countryside will be merged into an online platform run by the official map agency.

Britain on Foot was launched with a fanfare in May 2013 by the Outdoor Industries Association.

Touching the Void mountaineer Simon Yates led a walk up Blencathra as part of the festivities surrounding the start of the campaign, which was seen as a vehicle to increase outdoor activities participation.

Now the OIA, which represents brands, retailers and other companies and organisations in the outdoor world, said Britain in Foot will be moved to Ordnance Survey’s #GetOutside platform.

From 17 November, visitors to the Britain on Foot website will be re-directed to a dedicated landing page on the OS site.

The Britain on Foot logo

OIA chief executive Andrew Denton said: “At a strategic and political level, Britain on Foot has been a huge success.

“Under the banner of the campaign, we have successfully placed outdoor activities firmly on the government’s agenda. Our sector now influences decision making in areas such as sport and recreation, tourism, and health, and the outdoors is firmly embedded in UK policy making at ministerial level.

“The content of Sport England’s 2016 report Towards an Active Nation is clear proof of that.

“We all now need to focus on supporting participation delivery projects and that is why the OIA is getting behind #GetOutside as the major UK consumer call to action.

Britain on Foot will be incorporated into OS's #GetOutside

“We are delighted to be working with the team at Ordnance Survey, who have put significant resource into the project and built a fully featured website that is packed with a wealth of useful and user friendly content, designed to help people of all ages and abilities explore the outdoors.”

Nick Giles, managing director of Ordnance Survey Leisure, said: “We have been working with the Outdoor Industries Association for a number of years and I am delighted that we have been able to build this new partnership.

“Both organisations are passionate about the outdoors and making it enjoyable, accessible and above all safe.

“It is clear that an active outdoor lifestyle benefits not only health and wellbeing but also the development of a strong social and family environment. This new partnership gives us an even louder voice to inspire a new generation of outdoor enthusiasts.”

One of the original aims of Britain on Foot was to make the logo and its campaign as ubiquitous as Keep Britain Tidy, with swing tags on outdoor clothing and gear, and the symbol seen to be associated with outdoor pursuits across Britain.

The OIA said companies will still be able to use the Britain on Foot logo, but the campaign will sit entirely within #GetOutside from 2017 and the brand will no longer be used independently.

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  grough route uses OS mapping

  You can get into the great outdoors with the help of grough route, which offers you the chance to devise your own walking and cycling routes using Ordnance Survey mapping and grough’s dedicated route planning system.

For an annual grough route subscription of £19.50, outdoor enthusiasts have access to 1:25k, 1:50k and 1:250k Ordnance Survey maps of the whole of Great Britain, from the Isles of Scilly to Shetland.

Grough route enables users to create their routes or use one of the thousands of existing ones created by the community, print these out and use them to navigate their outdoors excursions.

Grough route also features route card creation and tracklog export features, as well as route profiles and point of interest information added by subscribers.

Shorter subscriptions are also available, starting at just £5 for 30 days, with full access to all of the system’s features.

• Grough’s editor Bob Smith is a member of the Outdoor Industries Association. Grough is a trading partner of Ordnance Survey, whose maps it uses in its grough route service.