Places you’ll need
Water, food, a bed or a bike shop, near you or along your route. Pick what you’re after, then use your location, search for a place or load a route.
Near you, or along the way
Near a place, it lists the nearest of whatever you’ve picked, with how far away it is, whether it’s open now and a button for directions in your phone’s maps app. Use your location, type a town or tap the map.
Along a route, it lists the stops in the order you’ll reach them, grouped by town, with how far along the route they are. When drinking water is picked, the long stretches without any are shaded red. You can save the stops as waypoints for a watch or bike computer.
What it can find
Pick how you’re travelling and it starts you off with a few things. On foot that’s water, food, cafés, campsites, somewhere to stay and toilets. A bike swaps the toilets for bike shops, a boat starts with chandleries and a van with garages.
Tap More for the rest. There are showers, cash machines, launderettes, stations and ferries, doctors and hospitals, outdoor shops, chemists, huts, and places to charge a phone or an e-bike.
Worth knowing
Car chargers only show when you’re travelling by car or van. For phones and e-bikes it lists chargers marked for bikes and ones with an ordinary socket.
A hospital only shows as having A&E when that’s on the map. If it doesn’t say, ring before you go. In an emergency, ring the local emergency number.
Where the places come from
Everything comes from OpenStreetMap, the map that volunteers draw and keep up to date. Pebbls keeps its own copy and refreshes it every week, which is why answers come back quickly.
Towns are well covered, quiet roads and hills less so. If something’s missing or has closed, the link under the list lets you add a note on OpenStreetMap, and a local mapper fixes it.
Questions people ask
Is it free?
Yes, and there’s nothing to sign up for. It works in the browser on a phone or a computer.
What does it look for when I’m walking?
Drinking water, food shops, cafés and pubs, campsites, hostels, B&Bs and hotels, and toilets to start with. You can turn any of them off and add others from More.
Can I use it along a route?
Yes. Load a GPX, KML or FIT file, or draw the route on the map, and pick how far off it you’d go. The stops come in route order with the distance along, and you can save them as waypoints.
Why can’t I see car chargers?
They only show when you pick Car or van, so walkers and cyclists don’t get a map full of them. For phones and e-bikes there’s Phone and e-bike charging.
Does it use my location?
Only if you press Use my location and say yes when your browser asks. A rounded version, to about 100 metres, goes to Pebbls’ server. It’s only used for that search.
How up to date is it?
Pebbls keeps its own copy of OpenStreetMap and refreshes it every week, which is why answers come back quickly. Anything added to the map today shows here within a week or so.
These places come from OpenStreetMap, a map that volunteers keep up to date. Our copy of it is refreshed every week. Some will be out of date, so ring before you go out of your way.