OS Flying Team keep mapping Britain’s changes
The Flying Team are usually in the skies above Britain from March to early November each year, using the aircraft and high-resolution cameras to survey about a third of Britain, that’s around 80,000 km2 of imagery data and over 100,000 individual images.
I thought I'd seen an article somewhere saying that they'd been able to take advantage of the reduced air traffic due to lockdown and travel restrictions to get more flying done. Can't find it now, though. Maybe I imagined it.
I believe that the OS have fairly well established criteria (internally, at any rate - I don't know whether they make them public) as to what features they include on the map and what they don't. It may be that they are well aware of the path you were on, but did not deem it worth showing. Or it may be that it's not easily visible from the air: especially likely in a wooded area like Bonaly, given that their flying season more or less coincides with trees coming to leaf.
As the linked article says, the OS does have ground-based surveyors - all 200 of them. OSM in comparison has a huge team of volunteer 'surveyors' on the ground, albeit each one will usually cover a limited range. On the flip side, this does mean that it can end up with something being included on the map because one single individual felt it was worthwhile.
I'm not a Strava user, but my understanding is that it shows routes based on where users' GPS tracks indicate people go - which is arguably even less selective than OSM, where at least someone has to go to the trouble of adding a feature if they think it worthwhile. (I wouldn't recommend that other people follow some of my GPS tracks, especially the ones out in the hills: they can be a tad "approximate...as can be my navigation.)
I tend to agree with crowriver: if you think OS maps are poor, you should try finding your way around wild country using the maps available in a lot of other countries. In many places if it's not a marked & recognised "trail" then as far as the map-makers are concerned it doesn't exist. And forget about useful things like indications of the terrain e.g. marshy or rocky, rocky outcrops and even individual large rocks like the OS (and Harvey's, to be fair) give you.
An American acquantance told me how shocked she was on visiting the Lake District for the first time to find that most of the paths on the map were not waymarked on the ground. The idea of finding your way around by using a map and referring to the landscape around you, rather than following marked trails, seemed utterly alien to her.
Actually, I can't see a lot wrong with getting just a little bit lost and finding your way by using a bit of geospatial awareness and locating yourself using whatever features are shown on the map. You don't always have to follow a path (though my missus does tend to object when I decide to head confidently off across a stretch of trackless moorland).
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