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2025-09-17-0917
GeoJSON files containing the public rights of way of Isle of Wight
The council of the Isle of Wight have provided me with a zip file that has several ESRI shape files that has the details of their paths. As well as having ESRI shape files for public rights of way, the zip file also has ESRI shape files for paths that are closed. The ESRI shape files seem to have been created on 30th July 2025.
Aside: thanks to David Groom for obtaining the first set of ESRI shape files from the Council back in 2017.
The council also provides an online map of their public rights of way. It can be accessed from this web page. Their website also provides PDFs showing their public rights of way.
An authority's Definitive Map is the authoritative source of their rights of way. The details of the public rights of way network contained in an authority's data are for information only, and are an interpretation of the Definitive Map, not the Definitive Map itself, and should not be relied on for determining the position or alignment of any public right of way. For legal purposes, an authority's data does not replace their Definitive Map. And changes may have been made to the Definitive Map that are not included in their data. The authority's data contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Attempting to view this data with more detail than 1:10000 may produce an inaccurate rendering of the route of a public right of way.
The council of Isle of Wight have informed me that the data is made available under the terms of Open Government Licence v3.0. So it's possible for you to use this data provided you give the attribution that the data has been provided by the council of Isle of Wight.
Elsewhere on this web site, there is a web page about how this web site provides the public rights of way of Isle of Wight in KML format. That web page explains how I've augmented the basic KML with additional information.
I've converted this augmented KML into GeoJSON.
Besides giving the longitudes and latitudes of the route of a public right of way,
each entry in the GeoJSON also has a name and a description.
The name will be something like:
IW|BB|7
There are three parts to the name:
"IW" (meaning "Isle of Wight"),
the id of the
parish/community/area
and the id of the path within the
parish/community/area.
The description will be something like:
Fo|IW:987|0.284|447|-1.07705|50.69167|-1.07240|50.68886|465288,88408|465620,88100
This gives other information about the public right of way.
First, there is a two letter code giving its type
which is one of
Fo (meaning Footpath),
Br (meaning Bridleway),
Re (meaning Restricted byway)
and
BO (meaning Byway open to all traffic).
Following this code, there are
a unique name,
the length in miles, any additional information obtained from the data supplied by the authority (or none),
the longitude of its first point,
the latitude of its first point,
the longitude of its last point,
the latitude of its last point,
the eastings and northings of its first point
and
the eastings and northings of its last point.
The following GeoJSON files are available:
GeoJSON file for footpaths in Isle of Wight;
GeoJSON file for bridleways in Isle of Wight;
GeoJSON file for restricted byways in Isle of Wight;
GeoJSON file for byways open to all traffic in Isle of Wight.
Because some of these GeoJSON files are large,
the GeoJSON is also available in a large number of smaller files.
Each smaller file has information about public rights of way that are in a
square that is 0.1 degrees longitude wide
and 0.1 degrees latitude high.
For example, the file 10W506Fo.json
contains details about the Footpaths that are partly/wholly in the
square that is west and north of -1.0 degrees longitude
and 50.6 degrees latitude.
Here is a link to a
zip file containing all the smaller GeoJSON files for Isle of Wight.
The latitude values for Isle of Wight range from 50.57 to 50.76. And the longitude values range from -1.57 to -1.06.