Built by a rider, in the Peak District
BridleNav speaks your route out loud, turn by turn, so your phone stays in your pocket and your hands stay where they belong.
“In two hundred yards, through the gate on your right.”
First ride free · Peak District, Cheshire, Lancashire & the Lakes
Why it exists
Reins in both hands. Gloves on. A horse who won’t stand still, on a track where stopping isn’t sensible anyway. Every other navigation app quietly assumes you can look at a screen.
So BridleNav doesn’t ask you to. It tells you what’s coming while there’s still time to do something about it, says “now” at the turn itself, and keeps talking with the screen off and the phone in your pocket.
If you have to look at it, it hasn’t worked.
In short: a sat nav for horse riders. A hands-free horse riding navigation app for UK bridleways and byways, on iPhone and Android, that works with the screen off and no phone signal.
What you get
A warning while there’s still room to react, then “Now, turn left” at the turn. A UK voice you can change in Settings.
Download the map before you box up. Riders have completed whole loops on BridleNav with no phone signal at all.
Colour-coded by how well we know it. Filter to what’s within ten miles of you, or search by name.
A 3D fly-through of the whole route over real terrain, so you know what you’re asking of your horse before the trailer is hitched.
Where to park, with a postcode and a what3words square — plus height and length restrictions before you tow somewhere you can’t turn round.
Road crossings, gates, boggy stretches, and the two houses where the dogs come at the fence. The things a local would tell you.
If a gate is padlocked or the bracken has swallowed a path, the warning reaches your app straight away. You don’t wait for an update.
Found a locked gate or a turn we got wrong? Report it from the route in about ten seconds. It comes straight to us, and if it stands up it becomes a warning every other rider sees.
If it goes wrong
Most of us ride out alone more often than we admit, and “the top field, past the second gate” isn’t much use to an ambulance.
One tap on SOS sends your exact what3words square to your emergency contact, and offers to call 999. It asks you to hold it down first — a phone rattling about in a saddlebag shouldn’t be able to call out on your behalf.
It works on GPS, so it doesn’t need a phone signal to know where you are.
The part most apps skip
A route drawn from a map and a route someone has ridden on a horse are not the same thing, and you deserve to know which one you’re about to load a horse for. Every route in BridleNav carries a badge.
Personally ridden and checked by BridleNav or a trusted local guide.
Based on a local rider’s detailed guide, but not yet personally ridden by the BridleNav team.
Drawn from maps, not yet ridden. Full written guide, parking and notes — but no spoken turn-by-turn yet.
Recorded and written up by another rider, and read by us before it went live. Not ridden by the BridleNav team, and we say so on the route.
Forty-one routes to begin with, every one badged honestly. If nobody has ridden it yet, we say so.
Where you can ride
The routes we have ridden and written up ourselves are here, and BridleNav began in Derbyshire. But riders anywhere in the UK can record and share their own, so the map grows wherever riders are — not only where we’ve been.
The community map
Forty-one routes will never cover the country. The bridleways you ride most are known by you and a handful of others, and they aren’t written down anywhere.
So BridleNav lets you record a ride and send it in. No files to wrestle with — you ride it, then at home you write the turn-by-turn directions in your own words and mark the gates, the water and the livestock. Those words are what the app reads aloud to the next rider.
Every submission is read before it goes live. Put your name to it or don’t — that’s your choice, and you can trim the start and finish so a route never begins at your own yard.
What it costs
Your first complete ride is free, with everything switched on — voice, offline maps, the lot. After that there’s a seven-day trial before you pay anything.
Cancel any time. Good for a season.
Works out at £5.83 a month — a little over half the monthly price.
Prices include VAT. Available in the United Kingdom. Subscriptions are managed through the App Store or Google Play, and you can cancel there at any time.
Questions riders ask
Yes. BridleNav is a GPS navigation app built for horseback rather than for a car or for walking. It speaks turn-by-turn directions out loud so you can keep both hands on the reins and your phone in your pocket.
Yes. Download the map before you box up and the app keeps navigating with no signal at all. Riders have completed whole loops on BridleNav with no reception. The SOS feature uses GPS to find you, though sending the message needs a signal.
Walking and cycling apps send you down footpaths and canal towpaths where horses are not allowed, and they expect you to look at a screen. BridleNav routes are bridleways and byways, and everything is spoken aloud.
The routes we have ridden and written up ourselves are in the Peak District, Derbyshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, Staffordshire and the Lake District. Riders anywhere in the UK can record and share their own routes, so the map grows wherever riders are.
Yes. Record a ride on your phone, then at home write the turn-by-turn directions in your own words and mark the gates, water crossings and livestock. Every submission is read before it is published, and you choose whether your name appears.
Your first complete ride is free with everything switched on. After that it is £10.99 a month or £69.99 a year, with a seven-day free trial. Subscriptions are handled by the App Store and Google Play and you can cancel there at any time.
BridleNav is designed so you do not have to. The screen can be off and the phone in your pocket; the app talks to you. If you have to look at it, it has not worked.
Who’s behind it
BridleNav is made by Charlotte Lowe at Unthank Hall Farm in Holmesfield, on the edge of the Peak District, where she farms and runs guided rides through Leading Ladies Equestrian.
It started because riders kept getting lost on bridleways she knew by heart — and because there was no way to hand that knowledge over without riding alongside them.
Every route carries the sort of detail you only get from someone who has actually stood at that gate.
