Cairngorms Trip Planner With Live Risk Layer
A trip-planning app for hikers, campers, and highland-games visitors that overlays live wildfire, weather, and trail-closure data on a route map so visitors don't arrive into a closed zone.
Outdoor travellers and event visitors heading to the Scottish Highlands
- Route planner that warns if any segment crosses an active fire or closure zone
- Daily fire-risk badge for popular Cairngorms destinations like Aviemore and Braemar
- Event-aware alerts for highland games, distillery tours, and festivals likely to be cancelled
- Offline trail map with risk status cached for the trip
Visitors searching the Scottish Sun for the Cairngorms story are a captive audience for a tool that helps them plan around the fire.
Cairngorms National Park recorded 2.5M trips in 2024 (recovering above pre-pandemic) and recent large-scale wildfires in 2024-2025 triggered BBC evacuations of villages, campsites and ski resorts — confirming both steady visitor flow and episodic news-driven interest.Cairngorms National Park | Summary of data from 2013 - 2024 ↗Villagers and campsites evacuated as wildfire burns across 2km in Highlands ↗
AllTrails and Komoot already cover Cairngorms trail content but neither surfaces live Scottish wildfire/closure overlays; however, both incumbents could add this as a feature, and no dedicated Scotland-only trip planner with a live risk layer surfaced in search results.10 Best hikes and trails in Cairngorms National Park | AllTrails ↗The best walks and hikes in Cairngorms National Park - Komoot ↗
AllTrails hit all-time-high revenue via tiered subscriptions (Plus/Peak) proving hikers will pay, but a Scotland-only niche with reactive fire/closure use is harder to anchor to a recurring subscription — likely needs freemium + event/camping affiliate to be viable.AllTrails Revenue Hits All-Time High Ahead of Being Sherlocked by Apple ↗AllTrails premium membership ↗
Wildfire risk in the Scottish Highlands is rising (CNPA approved new fire-management byelaws Feb 2025) and the park's 2.5M annual visits are structurally stable, but the core 'risk layer' use case is episodic/seasonal rather than daily, which pressures retention.Fire in the Cairngorms National Park - one rule for landowners, another for people and nature ↗Wildfire still burning as helicopters waterbomb Cairngorms ↗
Public feeds exist from SEPA, Met Office and Scottish Fire & Rescue Service for weather/fire warnings and the CNPA publishes trail/visitor data; mapping overlay on top of OpenStreetMap or Mapbox is a well-trodden mobile build, though polling multiple feeds in real time is non-trivial.Cairngorms National Park visitor report PDF ↗