to find OS maps utterly wonderful?

[Ormirian]

I know it's a little bit tragic for a grown woman to love maps sooo much but I do.

I have just ordered one for our holiday so I can plot walks for us to do - we won't do them because no-one else much likes walking and I won't do them alone because I'd feel guilty going off on my own all day. So the map is entirely theoretical really. A hangover from the days when I was child-free and could go where I wanted or even persuade DH to come with me.

But even now Buying The Map is an essential part for our holiday and if I didn't do it I'd feel lost. The DC had learnt now and whenever we arrive for the start of our holiday they all chorus 'Mum! Map shop!' when they see a likely looking place.

Eventually I will have the entire British Isles in maps and one day will lay them all out in one big super map!

leafgreen Wed 27-Jul-11 17:04:48
I tell you what else I love: my raincoat has a special map pocket.

A special pocket for maps.

OS maps.

**

I have just taken an OS map (Cardiff, newport and surrounding area 171 circa 1997 for anyone interested) to my raincoat to see if the funny pocket alongside the zip was actually a map pocket - and it is!! You have made me a very happy bunny leafgreen :o

You're right, Ormirian, Harvey maps don't have an extensive range. They're for walkers/climbers/runners so tend to only cover areas of particular area interest to these groups. But I think they're much easier to read and really beautiful.

I'm also really impressed with www.openstreetmap.org/ for built up areas. The coverage is variable but will often beat google maps as they show footpaths etc.

Thanks stevie, that link is brilliant! I used to use google for setting up running routes and measuring them but pita when I had to guess footpaths.

I think one of the things that I like about OS is that they show everywhere - even the non-descript fields and lanes that no-one apart from residents would ever want to know about. And they tell you weird and wonderful placenames which is another of my interests. I did like the look of the Harvey maps though - from what I could see they were beautifully clear. Love the idea of special horse-riding maps!

Just spotted this thread. I'm another cartophile and am lucky enough to work in an office with several other cartophiles so we can encourage each other in our sadness hobby.

My husband bought me a 1:25000 map book of the entire British Isles. It's my favourite present ever, and now I have google maps on my htc I can follow paper map and digital map at the same time whenever we go anywhere.

Does anyone know if there are easy to follow maps aimed at young children or should I just start DD off with her own OS maps?

I started my kids on the road atlas in the car - they love to track our routes
then they would borrow the OS
and they use the a-z Country books to find friends addresses

a 1:25,000 of home area is a good way to start the addiction interest

Another map fiend here. We buy one for whatever area we go on holiday. It cost us a fortune when we went to Devon & Cornwall!

Do anyone else annotate them? My Anglesey map in particular (actually my 2nd Anglesey map because DH kept complaining that the 1st didn't have the main road on it,) has years worth of comments about what the beaches are like, and things to make us remember them, where there are good farm shops, campsites with phone numbers etc.

Oh yes, bilbio. Lots of notes. Especially when I've lent them to friends and marked all the good pubs. Many of my OS maps of the county were donated by a woo ex boyfriend and have all the ley lines marked in biro too...

Have any of you addicts taken to the water and discovered the Admiralty charts? Totally worth taking up sailing for. When I worked for the Port of London Authority years ago I blagged loads of charts of the Thames that they were chucking and totally covered my living room wall with them.

Mathanxiety I did look at that link...It seems, then, that all the landowners in SW Cork in 2008 with their bloody "No Access" signs were being Rather Naughty then. Grrrr.....

PortBlacks -- I used to draw plans for the gazillions of lego houses I built as a child, including furniture layout...

Stubbornstains -- yes they were. However, there's the Law and there's the grey area, and I wouldn't fancy being accosted by an irate farmer. If you had a map that showed the trail you were heading for you could argue your point if you felt it was worth it. I wonder if a lot of the west Cork business was in answer to the New Agey Travellers that abound in the area; their ideas of private property and the rights of owners would have been in stark contrast to the farmers'.

I remember as a child dad bringing the car to a screeching halt on a country road and leaping out because he had spotted a field full of mushrooms, which we proceeded to raid. (The landowner had posted signs alerting anyone on the land to the presence of an electric cattle fence, but I just had to check if it was turned on or not, so I reached out and grasped it. Big Mistake.) I also have fond memories of being let loose on Djouce Mountain in Wicklow with friends at around age 10 (friend's mother used to bring us) and wandering for hours through the patches of bog, stretches of heather and spruce woods, and coming upon the top of Powerscourt waterfall one day. We had maps, but the various trails were not half as developed then as they are now. We spent a lot of time in the heather. We had a set time to meet again at the car.

I also recall on my first visit to London explaining the Tube map to a group of Americans who couldn't figure out Oxford Circus station. The Underground map is a marvel.

You can play all sorts of games with the OS map when you're stuck in a rainlashed cottage in Devon, eg each person picks two real places and makes one up and the others have to guess which are true.

Of course you have to use places like Gobblecock Hall (real!)

You only realise how amazing OS maps are when you go abroad to every other country and see how inferior their maps are in comparison - and this is one thing where it is not a subjective judgement - OS maps really are the best, most detailed and accurate in the world.

My box room (the "study") has OS maps on one wall, like wallpaper. I live in a hilly area with a confluence of valleys, so it looks great and quite dramatic.

I love maps too. I always buy them well in advance of the holiday and love to study them in detail, thinking where I might explore. It's part of the fun.
I bought an incredible OS map of Moidart in Scotland when I was in the area last year. It was a huge map but there was about two roads on it. It really brought home just what a wilderness big parts of Scotland still are.

Wow! Who knew there were so many of us out there? Love of maps is obviously much more common than I realised. My lovely DH got me Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey I haven't read it yet but plan to take it on holiday to Suffolk with, of course, the relevant OS maps!

I thought I was alone. This feels a bit like joining AA or something :o

I'm also very pleased that DD (just 4) also appears to have developed a love of maps too. I keep a stack of our most used ordnance survey maps in the glovebox of the car. Whenever DH has to get a map out to direct me she wants one too.... although I discovered a small child with a big map in the back of a car is not a good thing. Instead she's not got a small AA book of maps which she looks at.

bilblio, I can beat that- DS (7 months) loves maps too, he bashes them when they're unfolded and tries to eat them when they're folded up ;)

I also have to get maps of anywhere new we go though budget atm means I went to the library for our upcoming Peak District trip... very exciting to see so many contour lines (we're in the Fens!)

Not sure if anyone's mentioned it yet, but Map Addict is a very good read :)

Oh very good sparkly. I don't think I dare let DD near the maps when she was that age. I have photos of her "reading" the newspaper though. :)

I grew up on the very edge of the Peak District. My Dad still uses the same 1960's map of the Dark Peak which I grew up reading. It's an odd mottled brown colour, nothing like the brightly coloured newer version I have. I agree though the contour lines are great. I spent years living somewhere flat and the map never seemed quite as interesting without all those densely packed lines.

Slightly off subject, but for those who like comparing old and new maps of the same area, the National Monuments Record, based in Swindon, have a service where you send them your grid ref. and they send you 3 aerial photos of your area, centred on that ref, taken at different times. The earliest is in the 1930s.
Also, I would love to decorate a wall with maps, do you put a coat of varnish over them to protect them from wear and tear?

YANBU at all!

I love maps (Geography A Level was fun).

If you go to a specialist Ordnance Survey retailer (Blackwells in Oxford do it) you can get your own special Landranger map printed so it is centred on exactly the area you want. That way, you dont have to live with the standard Landranger maps that have the edges just where you dont need them.

I have had 3 done covering the centres of the last cities we lived in and am going to have them framed to put on my map room our office wall. Those sets of drawers with tiny thin drawers you can pull out with a map in each are a work of genius.

sonearsofar - a couple of coata of dilute PVA works fine and also helps make sure everything is really stuck down.

Another cartophile here. For Christmas I asked for (and received) two map books of the area where I live, from the 17th and 18th Century. I spend many happy hours pouring over them.

What are these coats of which you speak, with the special map pocket.

I used to do long distance riding and loved the maps - I still have them all somewhere, in little plastic wallets to hang round my neck.

Another map addict.

V excited by our August trip to Skye - because we need so many maps! Already have most of them from previous trips so probably no new ones required.

I have some framed maps from other holidays - one if the Tracy Arm Ford Terror Wilderness in Alaska (how cool a name is that) and a huge one of the Broken Islands group off Vancouver. They look fab and are such a nice memory of our trips in days pre DCs.

Confession over...

Can I recommend www.alangodfreymaps.co.uk to you all for historical OS maps from the 1890's etc? Great for the family historian and anyone interested in maps over the years. I've got half a dozen or so of the one inch maps of the area where I grew up. Ideally I'd quite like to put them up on the wall in the spare bedroom but dh won't let me. Boo.

Love maps too. Got the Map Addict book for myself and the history of the OS for DH's birthday.

The local OS Explorer maps are out on the sitting room floor as DH and DDs are going to climb a Munro tomorrow. DH delighted in explaining contours to the girls.

Go Harry Beck and Phyllis Pearsall!