The Forgotten Art of Map Reading

Way back when in 1997 mobile phones have been just becoming element of my every day life and it was a handy gadget to have specifically as I had just bought my 1st 7.5 tonner at the age of 17 and I had began subbing for DFDS at Coggeshall, Essex. The one issue I would in no way 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 each street across Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey, West Sussex, East Sussex, Kent and final but definitely not least, Higher London. In my very first week I was offered a day in London with some thing like 15 drops across the Higher London location, good. Oh for those who are not certain, Higher London is possibly less difficult described as everywhere inside the M25 circle. So age 17, 1st week of owning and driving my very first Tonka toy and 15 drops across 1 of the worlds busiest cities, where do I start off???! One particular of the other DFDS subbies mentioned “Don’t be concerned son, just get yourself a difficult back copy of the Master Atlas of Higher London and you will be fine.” – I couldn’t have had any much better suggestions than that. So on the way down the A12 I stopped at a garage and found 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 many with postcodes and TWAT SAT NAV was no exactly where to be seen. 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 get these small paper paged books called road maps. You could purchase them for counties or towns depending on what you essential and basically they had pages complete of the layout of your chosen area. At the back was an index with a full list of roads and estates and these had been listed with a page number and grid reference so you could discover the road on the web page in the map, amazing huh?? Making use of a single of these town maps along side a larger road Atlas you could fairly properly find any exactly where you wanted to go, all on your personal with no 22 satellite’s guiding you down an unsuitable one way street! Or even greater than employing the road map you have just bought you could use what we utilized to contact typical sense, most individuals had a bit of frequent sense as it was gained from parents and the college of tough knocks and hard luck. For example your honour Station Road, Anytown. 1st up have a look on your map (if you have one particular of that area/town) and look for station road in the index or just for the station. If there is no visible station have a appear to find the closest road to a railway line, basic. Once again employing a bit of frequent sense and a good map you can even function out exactly where an old railway may well have been. If you haven’t got a map you could often head towards the town and see if you could choose up the sign posts for the station. Or final but not least you could ask the neighborhood and they’d send you right round the town and back to where began and in the imply time with a bit of luck you’d stumble across Station road.

Now in London the streets are a lots and the site visitors lights and junctions are even a lot more. So possessing to maintain an eye on your difficult back atlas was really simple or handy so I discovered it very best to tear the A4 web page out. See the photo above. Nevertheless an A4 web page isn’t so easy to hold, so when you are close sufficient you can fold the web page to A5 size. Then finally when I was really close to where I required to be I would fold again so its small enough to hold in finger and thumb. Please see my thumb beneath. I have to say that in day to day driving it was very a lot uncover your own way to your location, no typing in a postcode and adhere to the arrows on your dash-mounted screen. All drivers back in these prehistoric instances had to have a sound expertise of the UK’s road ne2rk and most industrial towns and somehow we managed. In a prior life as a transport manager I watched a driver heading from Ipswich to Leamington Spa take the A14, M6, M42, M40 to his location. When I quizzed him to why he went this long way round, I got the response “That’s what sat nav said”. Now call me an old stick in the mud but I asked if he had looked at his road atlas to verify 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 expertise of the road ne2rk. Anyway I digress.

The beauty of a paper map over a twat sat nav is that I uncover I can constantly see a lot more than I require to, which can only ever aid you know where you are and what your surroundings are. For instance 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 each arrived at the right place with no major dramas, but along the way I could verify each street I passed and I could see how far ahead the subsequent turning was, without having possessing to wait for the 200 metre warning or what ever it is. Also hunting at the map you can get some notion of what the road you are turning into is like or which way it goes, something which twat sat nav can’t do very effectively. 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 is not 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 possibly just discover that you have some sort of new found satisfaction in your day to day job. Twat Sat navs do have their uses and I for one do like that truth they can tell you how far you are from your location and I can never argue against the truth that some 1 shouting directions at you is far safer than reading a map whilst driving along or every time you stop. My greatest worry is that the beauty of a good map is lost on all new drivers. Where’s the sense of direction that you all had to uncover the nearest sweet shop when you have been a kid? Does anybody else agree that all drivers ought to have an understanding of exactly where about’s they are in the nation and what other roads are available to the one particular your on with no aid 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 best take that tangent………………..

The Forgotten Art of Map Reading