Best map for driving in England--and where to get it!

I am a map person and I love the Ordinance Survey maps of the UK. You can order them on line or any good bookstore in the U.K., Waterstones, for example, will sell them. Great detail makes them good for walkers as well as they show footpaths and trails, monuments, etc.

The Automobile Association also issue road maps which you can get at service stations etc.

Whatever you do, do not buy it online. Go to a store so you can see if the print is so you can read it with out a magnifying glass.
Check Barnes and Noble
https://stores.barnesandnoble.com/store/2321

Or wait til you get there and try Waterstones

You need road atlas by the AA or Collins – about £5 from petrol stations and supermarkets. Or if you come across a branch of The Works you can get a bargain

https://www.theworks.co.uk/c/non-fiction-books/travel-books/road-atlas

You don’t want an Ordnance Survey map for driving, too much detail and unwieldy -walking yes but not driving.

It depends on what sort of driving you are planning. If just sticking to main roads, an AA or Collins atlas will be fine, but if you want to go on smaller roads these will be useless and you'll need an A-Z for cities or the relevant OS map for anywhere else. Sheet maps can be fiddly, but you can now get them in book form for most of the main tourist areas. Any bookshop, including WH Smith, for road atlases. Their range of other maps might be limited so if you don't get what you want there, you can buy from Ordnance Survey online or from outdoor shops like Cotswolds.

Well, you could start exploring by simply using Google Maps - I have switched on the live traffic flows :> https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4733899,-2.0043155,9z/data=!5m1!1e1

If you go into a supermarket, you should find road atlases for between £3 and £11. Ordnance Survey maps tend to be better for those who want more detailed information about a specific area - such as hikers.

We have a drive tour of the UK in October and I reserved a rental car with a navigation system. However, as backup, I purchased a map from Amazon.com that is very detailed. Also, I have run map quest routes for every day we travel.

The map that I purchased is quite large, so it requires opening up and folding prior to driving.

as a back up to the GPS for just driving around use The Works link given and get a stupidly cheap £2 AA atlas (they never sell them at full price). There is a store locator at the bottom. You might find them at higher price in the book/magazine section of a big supermarket and at full price in an upmarket bookstore (most of the stock at The Works is discontinued ranges)

In USA Amazon have the previous edition of the 3inch scale AA Atlas for $18.93 - the new edition is £4 at The Works.

For a good map because they are things of beauty and you want a souvenir. Or maybe because you need to see footpaths for walks, Ordnance Survey are the ones to go for. https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/shop/ probably the Landranger series with the pink covers (1:50,0000 scale, which is slightly bigger than 1 mile to the inch, so 1 inch= around 15 minutes walk on flat ground). They will post to USA but we already have a thread running about problems with the post! And you don't get an export tax break because there is no sales tax on books and maps in UK. You can buy them at decent bookstores, large branches of WH Smith (not airport newstands) and camping/leisure shops where you may find deals, try these https://www.millets.co.uk/google/store-locator

We've been purchasing maps from Borch for our trips. What we like about them is they are laminated, don't rip or tear after repeated folding, and can be written on with a white board pen. The ISBN number for the UK one we have is 978-3-86609-315-7.