Hands up who owns a map?

[Peteaud]

Another good old map site
http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/maps/

 

[DCLane]

Lots of maps, but then I was a Geography undergraduate

 

[totallyfixed]

I wear a Buff, have lots of maps and a very old Garmin GPS 3 ... how do I fit ?

Tongue, cheek, baiting Cunobelin who I usually agree with and just because it's a miserable day out there.

 

[ColinJ]

Lots of maps, but then I was a Geography undergraduate

Didn't you pass your finals?

 

[T.M.H.N.E.T]

Does sticking a turn marker cheatsheet my toptube qualify?

 

[DCLane]

Didn't you pass your finals?

2.1 back in '91, so yes. Although we didn't do that much with maps ...

 

[ColinJ]

2.1 back in '91, so yes. Although we didn't do that much with maps ...

Just that "I was an undergraduate" sounded like you didn't actually graduate!

I enjoyed geography at school. Physical geography rather than economic geography - I wasn't too bothered about where coal was mined or which country had the most copper. I had a flashback to lessons about limestone pavement (clints and grykes etc.) when i first saw it on the hills above Settle about 25 years later.

 

[ufkacbln]

I have a theory that a chap with a map wears a cap and those with a Garmin are helmet wearers - generally speaking

I used to mount the Garmin on the helmet, but found it limited the functionality

 

[lulubel]

The only "maps" I own are road atlases - one of the UK and one of Europe - that I bought just before we moved to Spain. I also bought a satnav at the same time, but didn't trust it enough to try to make the trip without maps. It was a good thing too, because we couldn't find it on the morning we left, thought it had been packed with all the stuff going into storage, and drove halfway across France without it. It turned up during our stop in France, when I was looking for something else. (We did buy a local map in France, actually, because the internet connection was far too slow to use google. I wonder what happened to it.)

We had loads of maps when I was a kid - pink OS ones, and also some that were more detailed, maybe green? My brother and I rode horses rather than bikes then, and we wore them out looking for more places to ride.

It would be nice to have some local maps, actually. It's much more fun to spread a map out on the floor when you're planning a route, rather than staring at a computer screen. Are there any decent Spanish maps?

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Are there any decent Spanish maps?

I spent my summer holiday last year asking the same question. I came to the conclusion that there may have been once, for some parts of the country, but they've not been updated for years and a heck of a lot has changed in the 21st C.

Off roading and following a route in the Picos was largely a matter of luck...

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Another good old map site
http://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/maps/

What a fantastic resource. Especially for those of us of a "this were all fields when I were a lad" bent.

Comparing Horsham/Crawley from the 20's to the present day is eye-opening... not to say eye-watering!

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

What a fantastic resource. Especially for those of us of a "this were all fields when I were a lad" bent.

Comparing Horsham/Crawley from the 20's to the present day is eye-opening... not to say eye-watering!

I'll second that - it's a great site! Thanks for the link.

Talking of ''This were all fields...'' I once showed my daughter the street where she used to live on the 1862 Stanford map ( http://www.mappalondon.com/ ) and she couldn't get her bearings at all, precisely because the street was called Stony Lane at the time and went across fields, and they hadn't even managed to put in the South Circular that runs past the end of the street !

 

[Peteaud]

What a fantastic resource. Especially for those of us of a "this were all fields when I were a lad" bent.

Comparing Horsham/Crawley from the 20's to the present day is eye-opening... not to say eye-watering!

The route i did at the weekend involves a bit of road last used in the 1980's and now closed at the ends due to the bypass.

I love silly historical things like that, old road, railway lines, canals etc.

Cycling along an old road, once used by 1000's of holiday makers and locals alike, make being out on the bike so special.

 

[summerdays]

Loads - and loads - various different OS scales for the same area in some cases, most of NI (a few of those different versions), some really old maps, reprints of old maps, Memory Map for the entire country and lots of other different types of maps too. I love maps, and I love Googlemaps and Bing maps (the satellite maps).

(And yes I have a Geography degree specialising in Physical Geography too).

I wouldn't go any where I didn't know without looking at a map - well that's not quite true because I also like to go browsing following my nose and exploring to get to know an area so that I form a sort of internal map in my head. But I don't usually worry about getting lost as I have a quite good sense of direction and can generally end up somewhere that I recognise or can work my way from. Mr Summerdays is the exact opposite and so owns a Sat Nav - and usually relies on me to navigate our way even on routes that we have done before.

 

[dodgy]

I've got a few OS maps, I'm proficient with a map and compass (writing this from the Lake district as I'm holiday coincidentally) but these days I'd rather have electronic maps, I take a paper back-up in the rucksack that I haven't ever had to fall back to in over 5 years of walking and cycling in remote areas.

So yeah, poring over a paper map can be quite involving, I love doing that, but give me electronic maps any day for actually using for their purpose.