Putting The Sill on the map

Opening tomorrow, during National Parks Week 2017, is The Sill National Landscape Discovery Centre in Northumberland National Park. Our surveyor Richard Bennett was on site recently to ensure the building was added to the map.

The Sill is the result of a partnership between the National Park and YHA England and Wales, including space for exhibitions, a café, a Youth Hostel, a rural business hub, and a shop specialising in local crafts and produce.

Richard was on hand to measure every aspect of the site and add the featured to 550 million in our geospatial database. His GNSS receiver locks on to several satellites and a series of ground stations (that’s right, no trig pillars required!) and the calculations are accurate to within a few centimetres.

Watch the video to see Richard at work, and The Sill on our popular leisure map, OS Explorer.

The Park hope the centre will help more people explore the landscape of the National Park and has a target of at least 100,000 visitors annually. Since construction began in November 2015 there have been more than 960 Sill events and 31,786 Sill activity days providing a range of education and volunteering opportunities.

We’re wishing the best of luck to the Northumberland National Park team for their opening tomorrow. If you’d like to visit The Sill, visit the Park’s site for details.

On Saturday 29 July we will officially welcome our first visitors to #TheSill: National #Landscape #Discovery #Centre and 86-bed youth hostel at Once Brewed on Hadrian’s Wall.⠀ ⠀ The grand opening of the £14.8m state-of-the-art visitor centre and world-class youth hostel will also be the finale to the UK #NationalParksWeek festivities, which run from Monday 24 to Sunday 30 July.⠀ ⠀ To celebrate, we are hosting a week-long festival of activities and events at key locations across the Park, which will culminate in The Sill opening weekend on 29 and 30 July.⠀ ⠀ Come and join us for the grand opening of our amazing new building. ⠀ ⠀ #GetStuckIn #nationalpark #northumberland #northeast #national #park #landscape #discovery #explore #active #adventure #outdoors #northumberland_uk #explorenorthumberland #scenicbritain #YHA #HLFSUpported

A post shared by Northumberland National Park (@northumberlandnationalpark) on Jul 20, 2017 at 4:43am PDT