The Forgotten Art of Map Reading

Way back when in 1997 mobile phones have been just becoming component of my daily life and it was a handy gadget to have especially as I had just bought my very first 7.5 tonner at the age of 17 and I had began subbing for DFDS at Coggeshall, Essex. The a single point I would never ever have believed back then was that now a days there would be a gadget in in the cab that would have saved me from learning  what felt like every single street across Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey, West Sussex, East Sussex, Kent and final but certainly not least, Higher London. In my initial week I was provided a day in London with anything like 15 drops across the Greater London area, good. Oh for these who are not confident, Greater London is probably easier described as everywhere inside the M25 circle. So age 17, 1st week of owning and driving my first Tonka toy and 15 drops across one particular of the worlds busiest cities, exactly where do I start???! One of the other DFDS subbies said “Don’t worry son, just get oneself a tough back copy of the Master Atlas of Higher London and you’ll be fine.” – I couldn’t have had any greater suggestions than that. So on the way down the A12 I stopped at a garage and identified a copy of the London bible.

So just take this in for a minute, its 1997, I had X quantity of drops (& collections) across the capital, a list of addresses, not a lot of with postcodes and TWAT SAT NAV was no where to be observed. How did we ever cope I hear you ask. Pull up a sand bag and I’ll inform you a story. After upon a time you could quit at a garage and buy these little paper paged books called road maps. You could get them for counties or towns based on what you necessary and essentially they had pages complete of the layout of your chosen location. At the back was an index with a complete list of roads and estates and these were listed with a web page number and grid reference so you could uncover the road on the page in the map, amazing huh?? Utilizing a single of these town maps along side a bigger road Atlas you could pretty nicely find any where you wanted to go, all on your own with out 22 satellite’s guiding you down an unsuitable one way street! Or even far better than using the road map you have just bought you could use what we used to get in touch with widespread sense, most people had a bit of frequent sense as it was gained from parents and the college of tough knocks and tough luck. For example your honour Station Road, Anytown. Initial up have a appear on your map (if you have a single of that region/town) and appear for station road in the index or just for the station. If there is no visible station have a look to locate the closest road to a railway line, simple. Once more making use of a bit of widespread sense and a excellent map you can even function out exactly where an old railway might have been. If you haven’t got a map you could often head towards the town and see if you could pick up the sign posts for the station. Or final but not least you could ask the local and they’d send you proper round the town and back to exactly where began and in the mean time with a bit of luck you’d stumble across Station road.

Now in London the streets are a plenty and the traffic lights and junctions are even more. So possessing to maintain an eye on your challenging back atlas was quite straightforward or convenient so I located it very best to tear the A4 web page out. See the photo above. Nevertheless an A4 web page isn’t so effortless to hold, so when you are close adequate you can fold the web page to A5 size. Then lastly when I was really close to where I needed to be I would fold again so its modest adequate to hold in finger and thumb. Please see my thumb below. I have to say that in day to day driving it was extremely a lot discover your own way to your location, no typing in a postcode and stick to the arrows on your dash-mounted screen. All drivers back in these prehistoric times had to have a sound information of the UK’s road ne2rk and most industrial towns and somehow we managed. In a preceding life as a transport manager I watched a driver heading from Ipswich to Leamington Spa take the A14, M6, M42, M40 to his destination. When I quizzed him to why he went this long way round, I got the response “That’s what sat nav said”. Now get in touch with me an old stick in the mud but I asked if he had looked at his road atlas to check exactly where he was going and I got a quick silence and then the response “I haven’t got one”. Not impressed I confiscated the drivers twat sat nav for the following week. Now I hope he has a slight understanding of the road ne2rk. Anyway I digress.

The beauty of a paper map over a twat sat nav is that I find I can constantly see more than I require to, which can only ever aid you know where you are and what your surroundings are. For example heading into London the other Saturday as a passenger I decided we would have a Map-Off. This was fine and a good contest and we both arrived at the appropriate location with no major dramas, but along the way I could verify each and every street I passed and I could see how far ahead the subsequent turning was, with no possessing to wait for the 200 metre warning or what ever it is. Also seeking at the map you can get some idea of what the road you are turning into is like or which way it goes, some thing which twat sat nav can not do very well. The one downside I found to the paper map is that it does not light up when you enter a tunnel!!

I challenge any driver who isn’t a map reader to take up the challenge and attempt and get yourself across the country with no twat sat nav. At the finish of the day you may just locate that you have some sort of new identified satisfaction in your day to day job. Twat Sat navs do have their utilizes and I for a single do like that reality they can inform you how far you are from your location and I can by no means argue against the truth that some one shouting directions at you is far safer than reading a map although driving along or every single time you stop. My largest worry is that the beauty of a very good map is lost on all new drivers. Where’s the sense of direction that you all had to discover the nearest sweet shop when you had been a kid? Does anybody else agree that all drivers must have an understanding of where about’s they are in the nation and what other roads are accessible to the one particular your on with no help from the NASA convention on your dashboard?? In the worst case we know that at 12 o’clock the sun is in the west and we want to be just to the right of that, so we greatest take that tangent………………..

The Forgotten Art of Map Reading