I like to look at maps

[Orangeblossom1977]

I'm not sure why, find it calming..are there any things you like to do which seem a bit boring but you strangely enjoy? Or is it just me...

@321zyx

I love maps - any orienteerers out there?.......our maps our different from OS version

Yes! I love any sport that involves a map. I have folders full of endurance and TREC competition maps (horse riding) and Orienteering maps. In the first lockdown we created a set of flags that we lay around the house/garden and then draw maps to find them. My 5 year old loves a game of 'beeping'.

I have to buy a map of anywhere I’m going on holiday for pre-holiday gloating as well as for use when I’m there. If it’s outside the UK then Stanfords is your friend. Wonderful shop (and they do mail order).

I also work with maps. I’m very lucky.

My DH loves maps too. I have had to stop his (pre-covid) habit of buying out of date OS maps for 20p from our local library when they are getting rid if them! We have numerous old maps on the wall and other maps of interest rolled up in various places around the house. His nickname is map man!

@MaidofKent78 - in a 'previous life' (teenager) I was heavily in to all thing equestrian. Latterly (and sadly no longer) I was into distance running and orienteering. I would have loved to have combined the two with endurance riding...c'est la vie.....

Oh I've found my people! I think it stems back from travelling a lot as a child (relatives miles away) - I used to love tracking our journey on the A to Z

It's now rubbed off on youngest DS

Another map lover! I work with GIS and love creating my own maps. Just finished a master’s and was deeply sad to give up my Digimap access when I graduated. My mum and I could spend many happy hours poring over OS maps.

I love maps too.

I also love world maps done as art - totally different to actual maps, but I would love several one on my wall

I have no connection, except being a customer, however I love these www.boldandnoble.com/collections/type-maps word maps.

@Orangeblossom1977 have you seen the game geoguesser that might be right up your street.

I like satnav but still love following our route on a paper map
I’ve got quite a lot of a-z’s....
Yes I agree Google earth is amazing. When we first used it my husband was able to find his teeny tiny village where he was born in the middle of nowhere in the Far East. He hadn’t been back since leaving in 1972 until our first trip in 2012.
I zoomed in on the house I was born in in 1956 and could see my dads long back garden with the path I can remember him laying still in the same place.

Got to admit that I don't own a satnav but think I am better at getting around the local area than colleagues who rely on it and don't read maps.

I still find a satnav handy when driving through an unfamiliar city. I find Sheffield almost un-navigable without using google map on my phone. And since the road system in Leeds has changed so much since I moved away over 20 years ago it is very easy to get lost in the one way loop that goes round the city centre.

On a long distance drive to Devon for example I will look at a map and be able to remember M1, A42, M42, M5, A30, but I would still need a satnav/google map on my phone for the fiddly bits at the end.

I don't need a satnav for driving locally. The only time it made sense was when I was driving down the motorway to work every day as it would warn me about traffic jams and accidents.

I've always loved maps from being a young child. We moved when I was 1, so DM used to spread the maps out on the floor (long sighted and in denial) to get to know the area and I'd get down to look and she'd talk through what they showed.

I also found the Highway Code strangely fascinating at 4-5 when a family member was preparing for their test.
The Reader's Digest Atlas passed many hours sitting in the car on a Saturday morning while my dad went into the bookies. Not only did I get to know the country well, but I also became an expert on loading a roof rack and aquaplaning by the age of 7

I became a professional geek.

Some years ago we were doing a wild camp in the Lake District and our route fell across all 4 maps. The custom map service was quite new, so we ordered a "Lake District Central" map to get the whole route on one map. The look on our mate's face as he faffed with the 4 maps, and we smugly pulled ouy our custom map

Not wild about maps as such, but I am a boring bastard over quizzes and crosswords. I will watch everything from Tenable, Lingo, Tipping Point, and Pointless to Mastermind, University Challenge and Eggheads. Pre covid there was no better night out than a pub quiz. I am also a fan of the Times crossword. Nobody seems to share my passion

I may have just made enquiries about soil use maps, thanks to this thread.

This came up on my Facebook feed this morning

marvellousmaps.com/shop/stgs-great-british-place-names-map?fbclid=IwAR0ID30e64EwivCAebowKa6fPak35LhKWOhN06FAyHY-e2meZHanS3PE9p0

I've looked at them quite a lot to find alternative daily walks during the pandemic, and have discovered so much about my local area that I did not know about.

I've looked at them quite a lot to find alternative daily walks during the pandemic

Same here. It gets a bit dull doing the same walks all the time.

@bellagogosdead

Do you all know about the National Library of Scotland?

Thanks @bellagogosdead

Have just spent a very satisfying half hour pootling about on there.

I too have found my people!! I adore Ordnance Survey maps so much that I wallpapered a room in my house with them and could (and do) spend hours in there.

Visitors (remember them?!) love it too. I think everyone is a cartophile at heart.

I also love wandering around churchyards imagining the stories of people buried there. Maybe that's just me....

My previous job used to involve tracing site histories using all sorts of maps. It’s fascinating seeing how settlements developed, industries came and went, how local street names related to particular occupations.

Vast UK military and defence sites were left off maps for decades due to the official secrets act. Thorpe Arch industrial estate near Wetherby was a WWII munitions site and retains its MoD street numbering (you can see the old magazines on Google Earth).

yesss, map people!

An ex got angry with me at Hereford Cathedral once because I spent so long looking at the Mappa Mundi .

See also the Booth poverty maps at the Museum of London.

It was a very bad fewyears day for my productivity when Google Maps became available .

I have a Russian Cold War map of my city (2 sheets of A0)
wonderful thing.

@Orangeblossom1977 have you seen the game geoguesser that might be right up your street

No, I haven't, I will have a look thanks.

Old Maps Online is quite useful too:

www.old-maps.co.uk/#/

Re Thorpe Arch - the 1952 map shows farmland but the 1989/91 plan shows the factory site.

I give you the Mazzle!

I once had to do a landscape project and spent many happy hours on the OS website looking at all the different landscape designations of the same area.

It's also trying to find some of the very first OS maps from the early 19th century. Some of them are on a scale of 1 inch to 1 mile.

Oh wow thank you all so much!