WITH satellite navigation becoming more commonplace in new cars today, the use of maps you can hold in your hand is becoming obsolete – but if ever there is a need for an easy way to obtain a map for an ultra-specific place (or a reason not to listen to that annoying voice telling you to make a U-turn) Multimap.co.uk is the place to go. Enter the postcode area of your destination and you are provided with a map that you can print out as a photographic image or just as a normal road map.

A few postcodes were entered as a test and most came up without a problem, although some did show photographs of empty fields where housing estates or commercial properties should have been – clearly, the snaps were out of date.

The layout is easy to navigate, with a side menu allowing you to book flights, trains, hotels and restaurants.

Also included is a direction section, which works like a train schedule search engine – enter destination and via points and it will calculate the quickest or shortest route.

Select a route that takes you into central London and the journey plan includes warnings at the point you will enter the congestion charge zone – a nice touch. You can view a map of each stage of your journey too – just click on the numbered link on each waypoint. A features section includes a full address search engine to find a map of your area, but you need to register to this particular section of the site.

The site looks pretty slick with a fairly clear layout with smooth links between each area of the site, although the traffic information section does not seem to be working. The site is also able to perform Multimap searches for the rest of the world.

If some of your drivers are in a car choice list that doesn’t include vehicles with sat-nav, take some of the pain away from their journeys by introducing them to Multimap route planning. Companies including Ford and Avis, Mazda and Lloyds TSB already use Multimap’s mapping and direction-finding services. The lowdown:

The site: www.multimap.co.uk

We like

Multimap is to route-finding what Google is to searching online

We don’t like

My house is not a brick pit on the edge of Peter-borough – some of the aerial photos are very old