Be the first to find a mystery trig pillar on Saturday and bag yourself £1,000

For four Saturdays during August, OS is going to broadcast a livestream from a mystery trig pillar somewhere in England across OS’s social media platforms – Instagram, TikTok and Twitch - to spark a race to find it.

Each weekend a different trig pillar has been selected for the livestream and throughout the morning clues will be shared on social media, to help identify its location.

The first person to arrive at the trig pillar and shout “Touch Grass” to the camera will receive a £1,000 prize.

OS is encouraging everyone in the UK to stop doom scrolling social media feeds and take action to get outside instead.

Its consumer research has found younger generations are less likely to engage with the outdoors because they are unfamiliar, or lack confidence, using outdoor kit and mapping.

Britain’s national mapping service launched its Touch Grass campaign to change this and has embarked on a series of ideas to gamify the outdoors through social media to attract more young people and promote how outdoor activities can be enjoyable. 

Trig pillars are a network of four-foot-high stone obelisks that OS began erecting in the 1930s to improve its mapping of Great Britain.

About 6,500 popped all over the country for triangulation, a process used to obtain accurate locations for maps. Surveyors used to balance their equipment on top of them. They fell out of use in the 1960s when more modern mapping techniques were introduced, but thousands remain across the nation as monuments from the past. On an OS Map they appear as a blue triangle symbol with a dot in the middle.

During each weekend, unusual activities will take place at the mystery trig pillar while an OS champion waits for the first visitor to arrive.

To make sure you don’t miss out on taking part in the challenge, follow OS on Instagram, TikTok and Twitch.

About Ordnance Survey

Ordnance Survey is the national mapping service for Great Britain. Our mission is to help more people across the world to #GetOutside more often and enjoy a healthy relationship with the outdoors.  We aim to make the outdoor activities as enjoyable, accessible and safe as possible. Our flagship digital navigation app OS Maps has been downloaded more than 5 million times and is used by our customers over 3.5 million times per month to find routes and navigate the outdoors. Our iconic set of 403 OS Explorer and 204 OS Landranger paper maps (recognised as the best in the world) are the most detailed navigation maps to cover the entirety of Great Britain. Our full range of outdoor products, including personalised Custom Made Maps, and a full accessory range are available online via the OS Shop.