27/09/2026
Fabulous idea ❤️
Riders of Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, Northumberland and everywhere in between— I need your help. 🐴
I'm building BridleNav. It talks you through a bridleway route out loud, so you can keep both hands on the reins and your eyes on your horse instead of stopping every five minutes to squint at a phone. Where to park the lorry. Where the gates are. Where the water crossing is. Which way to turn — before you get there, not after.
Every rider knows the feeling. You're somewhere new, the track forks, and there's nothing to tell you which way is the bridleway and which way ends at a locked gate two miles on. So you turn round. You lose an hour. Sometimes you end up on a road you'd never have chosen, with a tired horse and the light going.
That's what this is for.
🗺️ But here's the thing. Right now BridleNav knows the Peak District and not much else. Wales is empty. Scotland is empty. Cornwall, Northumberland, the Dales, the New Forest — and most of the rest of the country besides. Not because they're not worth riding, but because I haven't ridden them.
You have.
And what you know is worth more than you think. Where a lorry can actually turn round. Which gate you can open from the saddle. Which bridleway is a lovely canter and which one is a bog by November. Which lane you'd never cross on a young horse. None of that is written down anywhere — it lives in the heads of riders who've learned it the hard way, and it's priceless to the next person who comes that way.
I can't build this on my own and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
So if you've got a route you love — the one you do every Sunday, the one you always send people to when they ask where to hack — put it on there for the rest of us.
📱 It's easier than it sounds. You ride it exactly as you normally would, with the app recording in your pocket. Nothing to press, nothing to think about, no faffing about at gates. When you get home it shows you your ride on the map and points out where you turned, and you just tell it what's there — gate here, water there, bear left at the big oak. It's quite satisfying, like writing out directions for a friend.
Your name goes on the route as the rider who found it, unless you'd rather it didn't. And your corner of the country is finally on the map — with every rider who comes after you finding their way because you were there first.
💬 Comment with where you ride and the route you'd add, and I'll get you set up.
Because there is no decent map of Britain's bridleways. Not one that tells you where the gates are, which lane is safe to cross, or whether the track you're on actually goes anywhere. There should be. Between us, there can be.
