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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: An essay about maps
From: John Huth
Date: 2010 Nov 13, 23:07 -0500
From: John Huth
Date: 2010 Nov 13, 23:07 -0500
Certainly, the USGS topo's are far out of date with respect to tracks - hiking and passable 4-wheel-drive routes. I've found too many out of date instances to recount.
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Keeping up with the grind
On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 6:00 PM, Fred Hebard <Fred@acf.org> wrote:
Are the British Ordnance Survey maps really as accurate as she claims? I've never seen a high resolution (<= 30') map that was 100% accurate, where I had knowledge enough of the terrain to detect the errors.
It was rather a nice read, thanks for sharing it.
On Nov 13, 2010, at 4:43 PM, Peter Fogg wrote:
An essay for those interested in maps:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/road-to-nowhere-20101112-17r37.html
You can tell the good lady is from the Big Smoke. If she'd spent more time in remote places she'd have known that when you get to a place like Hungerford you don't just drive through it. You stop and, first of all, take on fuel. Even if your tanks are near-full - whether you'll find any more further on is never guaranteed, and the person selling fuel is potentially a good source of information about what lies ahead. Then you visit the pub. If the place is a stepping-off point to really remote places you're also expected to register with the cops. Its just common sense really, but you can expect to be quizzed about how well-prepared you might be for the next leg, including your mapping resources.
As you drive out from the relatively well-populated coast into the relatively bereft-of-people interior, you go from ignoring other motorists to acknowledging them. Then when you get further out, if another vehicle approaches from the direction you're going then you both stop - blocking the road, but that's rarely a problem - so the drivers can have a leisurely chat, driver's window to driver's window, elbow to elbow, about the weather and the price of ewes and, what interests you most, what's ahead.
In two words: local knowledge. The good lady is dreaming with her whimsical insistence on mapping accuracy. As if there was such a thing.
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Keeping up with the grind