About the data
Where everything on this site comes from, and the licence each source is used under.
What we never publish
Never published: traveller ages, heights, weights and citizenship; booking confirmations and contacts; prices paid; inbox captures; the research tree.
How we judge a place
A place page says why it is worth a trip in one sentence, and says when we read the sources behind it. That sentence is our own judgement, helped by a few facts we can check: whether the place holds a designation such as a UNESCO World Heritage Site or a national park (a place inside a designated area says so), whether a guidebook or a list has written about it, how many visitors it gets, and how widely it is known.
“Wikipedia in 30 languages” (the number varies) is that last one: the number of language editions of Wikipedia that have an article about the place, counted on the date shown. It is a rough sign of how widely a place is known, not of how good it is.
No star ratings and no review counts are used, from any site.
Sources
Each source is listed with its licence, what we use it for, and a link to its terms. Where a map is drawn by Google Maps, Google’s logo and terms stay on that map.
Maps
OpenStreetMap
Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0
Contains information from OpenStreetMap contributors, made available under the Open Database Licence.
Used for: The place catalog, trail and route lines derived from OpenStreetMap, and geocoding through Nominatim.
OpenRouteService
Routes computed from OpenStreetMap data, ODbL 1.0
Road routes: OpenRouteService (openrouteservice.org), from OpenStreetMap data, ODbL.
Used for: The road and path routes drawn on a trip's map and written into its GPX and KML files, and the drive and walk times between stops.
Places
Wikidata
CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication)
Coordinates and identifiers from Wikidata.
Used for: Place coordinates, elevations and identifiers resolved when a place is added, and the city-centre points of the trip builder's start hubs.
GeoNames
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
Contains data from GeoNames, CC BY 4.0
Used for: The towns and cities layer: the names, positions and populations of places of 1,000 people or more, used for the nearest town of a place and for the city filter, shown as GeoNames has them.
OurAirports
Public domain
Airport names, codes and positions from OurAirports (ourairports.com), released to the public domain.
Used for: The airports the trip builder offers as a start and as the airport to fly into.
Government of Canada open data
Open Government Licence – Canada
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.
Used for: Canadian parks, trails and boundary data where used.
Source and terms for Government of Canada open data (opens in a new tab)
US National Park Service
Public domain (US government work)
Information from the US National Park Service.
Used for: US national park facts, trails and alerts.
Source and terms for US National Park Service (opens in a new tab)
opendata.swiss
Open use (terms vary by dataset; attribution required for some)
Swiss open government data from opendata.swiss, used under each dataset's terms.
Used for: Swiss trail and transport data where used.
Our own words
Written for this site; not licensed for reuse
Notes, summaries and plans on this site are our own writing.
Used for: Place notes, trip plans and research summaries.
Weather
Open-Meteo
CC BY 4.0
Weather data by Open-Meteo.com.
Used for: Forecasts and historical weather shown on plan pages.
Copernicus Climate Change Service, via Open-Meteo
Copernicus licence (free, attribution required)
Generated using Copernicus Climate Change Service information, delivered through Open-Meteo.
Used for: Reanalysis behind the historical weather figures.
Source and terms for Copernicus Climate Change Service, via Open-Meteo (opens in a new tab)
Photos
Wikimedia Commons
Per image (Creative Commons licences or public domain)
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons; the author and licence of each image are on its Commons page.
Used for: Photographs on cards, place pages and plan galleries.
Boundaries
Natural Earth
Public domain
Made with Natural Earth.
Used for: Country outlines on the globe, its landform, sea and river lines (the line files), and the city rows the globe search reads.
world-countries (mledoze/countries)
ODbL 1.0 (Open Database Licence); flag images are not covered by it
Contains information from mledoze/countries (world-countries), made available under the Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0.
Used for: Country facts on the globe: names, codes, capital, region and area.
Source and terms for world-countries (mledoze/countries) (opens in a new tab)
geoBoundaries
Per country (mostly CC BY 4.0 or ODbL)
Administrative boundaries from geoBoundaries; the licence of each country's layer applies.
Used for: States, provinces and districts on the globe.
Statistics Canada
Open Government Licence – Canada
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada (Statistics Canada, 2021 Census boundary files).
Used for: The census division boundaries for Canada on the globe.
Money
Frankfurter and the European Central Bank
Free use; ECB euro foreign exchange reference rates
Exchange rates are ECB reference rates served by Frankfurter, shown with their date.
Used for: Currency conversion for display only.
Source and terms for Frankfurter and the European Central Bank (opens in a new tab)