As well as the iPhone I usually carry a Garmin Geko 201 on longer trips, ~70g inc lithiums, simple to use & picks up satellites faster & more reliably than the iPhone. Cost £20 on Ebay.

Helloooo Merrylegs!

Another vote for the Etrex20. I found a company doing full UK 1:50k OS mapping for around £25.

As has already been said, it's dead easy to use, has a good battery life, is waterproof to IPX7 (that's pretty waterproof!) and is generally a tough bit of kit.

I particularly like the idea of being able to look at the screen in daylight without having to fire up the screen illumination, thus saving battery power.

The only cons are that the manual is pretty useless and the website poor. The better news is that there's loads of information available on t'interweb.

Give me a shout if you want to chat about them.

Best wishes,

John

PS: Please pass my best wishes to Mike also.....the daft bugger

Great responses and lots of good sense from you all, many thanks for the ideas. I don't have a smartphone (nor do I see the need for one, given my quiet lifestyle) so I have now fixed to borrow a Geko and perhaps later in the year I might indulge in a little Foretrex (I'm struggling not to make a ghastly pun here..). I've tried heavier and fancier GPS like Etrex - we do actually have an Etrex 20 lurking in a drawer, an unused Xmas present from me to Mike - but it's too heavy for someone who will be cutting the handle off her toothbrush to try and spare the old knees: however, I'm sure that one day I'll get to grips with it for shorter trips, for the fun of having the onboard mapping. Ho hum.

If you have a phone that can add Apps then all you will need for spot fixing your position is an app from the Ordnance survey called OS Locate. Its fast and accurate and you won’t need a separate gadget, batteries or charger. You can download it today and give it a trial run. If you don’t like it then the etrex is the option.

"I don't have a smartphone (nor do I see the need for one, given my quiet lifestyle)". Well M if you did have one you wouldn’t need a GPS. And its still basically just a phone with a few extra bits. Technology is the way forward and some phone satellite sensors are better than some stand alone GPS which is pretty sickening when you consider how much mapping GPS’s cost. It’s worth considering. Go on you know you want to. The other M could set it all up for you while he’s having a wee break. (No pun intended).