Privacy Policy
Last updated: 26 October 2026
Roam Northumberland was previously called ToRoam.
Roam Northumberland is a field guide to Northumberland. This explains what it does with information about you. It is short because the app does very little with it — but it tries to be exact rather than flattering.
There is no account, no sign-up and no login. We do not know who you are.
What stays on your phone
All of the following is stored on your device and is never sent to us:
- Where you set off from — the town or postcode you type in, or your location if you choose to share it.
- Your trips — their names, the days you've chosen and the places in them — and which places you have marked as visited, including the dates.
- Your settings — interests, how far you'll travel, whether sky alerts are on, and whether nearby cafés and places are shown.
- Downloaded maps and a cached copy of the place information.
Roam Northumberland has no account database, so none of this is uploaded to us. Your starting point and the places on a route are shared as described below. Note that iPhone backups may include app data, depending on your own iCloud and backup settings — that's between your phone and Apple, not something Roam Northumberland controls.
Location
Roam Northumberland asks for your location only if you tap "Use my current location". You can decline, or type a town instead — the app works either way.
Distances are worked out on your phone. Two things do leave it:
When you type a town or postcode, Roam Northumberland asks your phone's own geocoding service to look it up, which may send that text to Apple. It happens as you pause typing, so more than one version of what you type may be looked up.
When you open a trip in Google Maps, your saved starting point and the stops you chose, in your order, are passed to Google Maps. For most stops this is the nearest car park, taken from OpenStreetMap data built into the app; where none is mapped, it is the place itself. The starting point is whatever you set — a town you typed, or a location you shared earlier — so it is not necessarily where you are standing now. Routes go to Google because they have several stops, and the button says so before you tap it.
The weather forecast shown on Before you go is requested for the coordinates of a place in the guide — never for wherever you happen to be.
Map providers receive the areas of the map you look at, which is not the same as your location, but is not nothing either.
Calendar
If you tap Add to Calendar on a trip, Roam Northumberland opens your iPhone's own "new event" screen, filled in with the trip's name, day and stops. You choose whether to save it. Roam Northumberland does not read your calendar or see any of your other events.
Suggested trip orders ("Order my day") are worked out on your phone. Nothing is sent anywhere to do it.
Notifications
Sky alerts — dark moon periods and meteor showers — are worked out on your phone using arithmetic, not a server. Nothing is sent anywhere to make them happen, and there are no push tokens, so we have no way to contact your device.
They are off unless you switch them on in Settings.
Services the app connects to
Any internet request reveals your IP address to whoever serves it. These are the connections Roam Northumberland makes:
| Service | What for | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| MapTiler, or CARTO where MapTiler isn't configured | Map tiles | Your IP address and the map areas you view |
| Open-Meteo | Cloud forecast | A dark sky site's coordinates from the guide — not yours |
| Your phone's geocoding service (Apple) | Looking up a town or postcode you type | The text you typed |
| RevenueCat | Managing purchases | An app user identifier and your purchase history |
| Our content host | Updated place information | Your IP address and which file was requested — nothing about your list or check-ins |
| External image hosts | Photographs in local business listings | Your IP address and which image was loaded |
Place photographs, including freely licensed ones credited on each place page, are built into the app and load without any connection.
Apple Maps, Google Maps, your phone app and any business website are opened only when you tap them, and are then governed by their own terms. Directions to a single place use Apple Maps on iPhone; a multi-stop route uses Google Maps.
Purchases
If you subscribe or buy the ad-free option, Apple takes the payment — Roam Northumberland never sees your card details.
RevenueCat manages the record of what you have bought, using an app user identifier it generates. Roam Northumberland never asks for your name, email or Apple Account details, and never sets them as customer attributes. That identifier is pseudonymous rather than anonymous: it isn't your name, but it does link your purchase records together, and it exists from the moment the app first opens rather than only when you buy something.
Children
Roam Northumberland is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect anything from them.
Your rights and your data
We do not operate any account database. Your saved places, check-ins and settings exist only on your phone, and deleting the app removes them from it.
Two things are not deleted by uninstalling: any copy inside your own device backups, and the purchase records held by Apple and RevenueCat, which exist so your purchase can be restored on a new phone.
You can manage or cancel a subscription in the Settings app on your iPhone, under your Apple Account → Subscriptions. If you want to know what is held against your use of Roam Northumberland, or want it removed, get in touch using the address below and we will tell you what we can find and what we can do about it.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date at the top will change and the new version will be here before it takes effect.