En:mapping worked with the Moors For the Future Partnership (part of the Peak District National Park) to look at patterns of recreational use and what makes people visit a particular location within the Peak District. The aim was to measure accessibility of the Park via two methods - public transport and private vehicle.

To map recreational use we constructed a GIS model that assessed the accessibility of every portion of the National Park based on a range of parameters: land cover, slope, footpath network and known access points (car parks and public transport stops). The landscape was converted into a 25m grid and the cost (time taken to travel across that 25m cell) was calculated. The result was a map which showed the minimum travel time to each 25m square within the Park. This work is ongoing and is to be modelled alongside actual visitor numbers to see whether it can be used as a more cost-effective alternative to actually counting visitors.