Review: Parallax Interactive Guides: North Dartmoor education software

If you enjoy walking; from a gentle afternoon stroll to a more vigorous trek across the countryside, you may well find Dartmoor and the other English national parks a draw.

These wilder, less densely-occupied parts of the country need to be treated with respect, though, and a good guide, showing tried-and-tested routes, is a sensible way to plan a trip.

There are plenty of printed guides, of course, but this new CD-ROM from Parallax Interactive Guides adds several features unique to its interactive medium.

For a start, virtual pages are much cheaper than paper ones, so there's little to restrict the number of photos that can be used to illustrate a walk.

That's certainly the case here, with up to 25 screens - each with three well-composed photographs - following one of 10 routes. And of course, pages can be printed out and taken on the ramble.

The breadth of coverage enables details such as local plants and animals, some of the archaeology and certainly the lie of the land, to be very well illustrated. Add to this the inclusion of a full 360-degree video from a key vantage point in each walk and you get a very good feel for what you’re likely to see.

As well as details of the walks themselves, there are pointers to local pubs and restaurants where you might want to have a drink or a meal at the end of your expedition. Details of campsites, equipment shops and even a page on each main town and city in Devon are also included.

The product reviewed here is a single CD, produced in Adobe Acrobat with QuickTime videos, but there's also a downloadable version which will run on an iPod Video, with another for smart phones in the pipeline.

North Dartmoor is the first in a series of guides that Parallax will be releasing, with the intention of covering most of the main national parks and some key foreign locations, too.

By the end of the year, we should see the companion South Dartmoor as well as a tour of Mt Blanc. The guides are a very viable alternative to a printed guidebook, with some unique extras not available from print.

Price: £16.50 for CD £10 for iPod download

Related reviews
Navicore Personal 2006/1 
Verdict: A GPS device designed for walking, cycling and driving that will work on any SmartPhone and PDA.
Rating: 3/5
Price: £199