I'm sure this must be on here somewhere, but I can't find it... Anyway, just wondering where (Zurich or online...) to get the best walking/cycling maps of Switzerland - and who produces them. Walking yes, not hiking - hiking sounds a little strenous to me. And yes, the odd mountain's fine, but walks of between say 2 and 5 hours, no more. Cycling? All day's ok, but not too many mountains please - I'm more used to the flat, so even a 5% gradient can be a little tough going after a while (as long as it's uphill).

Kummerly and Frey make the maps you're looking for. They're a bit dear. You can find them in many bookstores and kiosks or on their website.

Another excellent set of maps are the SwissTopo 1:50,000 hiking maps, widely available in bookstores and kiosks as well as online. From the description: .ChrisW's post on Cycling in Switzerland is required reading for a newcomer to Switzerland who wants to cycle; it includes a section on maps.

For a more formal type of walking map (you'll see what I mean when you compare them with the Kummerly & Frey ones) there are the Swisstopo ones. They are labeled as the official map of the Swiss Hiking Federation and are produced by the federal mapping agency. Orell Füssli also have a good range.

Good shops in Zurich are:
- O-F itself
- the travel bookshop at the start of the Bahnhofstrasse, about 100m from the main station
- the newsagents in the main station, at the concourse level

For walking you can get several little books with 1 to 5 hours walks from any bookshop but for me the breakthrough was the SwissMap 25 series of DVDs which has every wanderweg, mountain trail, and alpine trail in the country. You can make up your own walks and print the maps.

Gorgeous but EXPENSIVE (8 x CHF178 = CHF1424)!! Fortunately I do all my hiking in the Valais, so I only need one of the eight maps.

The 1:50,000 DVD covers the whole country for CHF495, about a third of the cost of the full set of 1:25,000s.

Crikey - 52 weekends a year, let's say three years in Switzerland - I make that CHF 9.13 per walk. Think I'll have to stick to the old fashioned paper format!

The other point I guess is whether I could borrow the maps from a library - not had a chance to have a look round one of those yet...

Ah, but are they in English? Still struggling to understand the local language...

Multiply the number of maps covered by each DVD by the 30 or 40 CHF each one costs and you actually save a lot of money - and the updates are via t'internet and free .

Basel has a number of public libraries where you can borrow these maps for up to four weeks. I would assume that Zurich has something similar.

As far as I remember, the maps have all important information in four languages, English being one of them.

For online information, try the Swissgeo website. You can zoom in to an incredible level of detail. You can save money by only buying more general maps of many areas of the country (I have the set of about ten 1:100,000 composite maps from SwissTopo that covers the whole country), then before you go to do a hike, look at it closely on the Swissgeo website, and mark on or write down separately any trails or features that are not on the 1:100,000 map. It's worked very well for me so far. Only for my local area do I have a more detailed map, 1:50,000, because I use that more often. The trails are sign-posted so well and are so easy to follow that I haven't needed any more than this so far, and I've done a fair bit of hiking.

I only have the Valais CD, but it comes with a 1:500,000 map of the whole country, which I find very useful for locating places that I read about. Hit Cntr-F and enter the place name and, presto, you get a map centered on that place! Sure, Google Earth or Google Maps can do the same, but this works without the longish download times.

On a different note: The SwissTopo web site has been restructured, and every bloody URL is broken, as you can confirm by clicking on the link in the quote Current link is SwissMap 25.