Pitfall Maps
What Happened to All The Maps?
We can all navigate now, but do we know where we’re going?
Admit it. When was the last time you used a map? I mean a real paper map with symbols and roads and paths and forests and villages and towns and hills.
When I was a kid, a map was as ubiquitous in our household as pots and pans. They were everywhere. Every shelf and table had a pile of tattered Ordnance Survey maps on it.
My father was a keen hiker and mountaineer. Whenever we went walking in the hills he always had a rope, a hip flask of whisky and a map. He knew the routes off by heart. But we still carried a map. It was part of the ritual.
We would park up, get our boots on, look at the map, then set off. Then halfway up, look at the map again. Then at the top, look at the map once more. Even when we’d finished the hike, we would look at the map to see where we had been.
Sometimes at home on rainy afternoons, I would just look at maps. Just look at the symbols, the contours, the winding paths, the churches, the ancient sites, and the stone circles. Why were they there?
So I used to just head off on foot or on my bike with my map to search out these places. Not only was it an excuse to have a walk. But it fuelled my…
