 |
 |
Dear Lis-mappers, For those of you who do not subscribe to "Cycle Touring and Campaigning", you may find the following extracts from a map review of interest. Chris Juden has commented at length on "O/S Touring maps of Cornwall and Devon: Tried and Tested" - his views may seem somewhat Oliveresque to many lis-maps regulars! With best wishes, Nick "For the first time since 1979, the Ordnance Survey has produced a new map on a suitable scale for cycling (i.e. between 1 to 100 and 150 thousand.....) .... " "Could this be a first glimpse of that holy grail of British cyclists, a national series to plug the yawning gap between 50k Landranger and 250k Travelmaster? I'm afraid not. I have never been more disappointed upon opening a map. What I saw is little more than a blown-up Travelmaster. In one respect it's even less: Travelmaster minus contours, leaving only height colours at wide and irregular intervals. You've heard the expression dumbing down? Here it is, writ large, with a map designed to be read with half of one eye at 50mph. Although there's more than six times as much space for it, I struggled to find any extra information compared to Travelmaster..............." "... this 'Touring' product does not claim to be any sort of cycling map. Rightly so. It's yet another for the filling station counter. A sad thing that does not encourage personal discovery of the county even by car-borne visitors, but perpetuates honey-pot tourism by delivering hapless grockles to industrially organised attractions. Between these attractions is a blank: a place where cartographers of old inscribed "here be dragons". ...... "For three decades CTC [Cyclists' Touring Club] has been asking Ordnance Survey to fill the corresponding gap in their range. If this is their answer I won't buy it and hope that neither will others. For if these maps sell it's possible they'll make more of the same and cyclists will never get a decent national series at this scale. If you think that's important you'd all better write and tell the Director General, Ordnance Survey, Romsey Road, Southampton, SO16 4GU." ________________________________________________________ Nick Millea Map Librarian, Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG tel : 01865 277013 fax : 01865 277139 email : [log in to unmask] homepage: http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/guides/maps/ ________________________________________________________ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%