04 August 2016
Touring With Maps
The case for turning off SatNav.
By Chin Chin
To SatNav or not to SatNav? That is the question; at least it is the question which has to be answered at the start of a touring holiday, the striking of a balance in that contest between challenge and convenience which sets the parameters of endeavour in today’s world. It has become easy to get to the North Pole using snowmobiles? Very well then, get there using dogs. Dogs are too easy? Then pull your own sled. A phone makes it too safe? Leave it behind. If satisfaction comes from doing things which are difficult, then get rid of the gadget which make them easy. Your holiday will be better if you just use maps.
They fit in with the idea of touring, too. It is a pursuit best carried out in an open-topped Bentley with a wide running-board and comfortable leather seats. The staff have packed a hamper which is strapped to the boot and the wind ruffles the hair of your attractive companion as you put your foot down in the straight. Alas, it is not exactly like that nowadays, cars with running boards and hampers being something of a rarity. Still, one should preserve what one can from a more elegant age, and that means maps. There is no looking at a little screen; no pressing buttons in panic because you cannot work out to which of the roads leading off the roundabout the arrow is pointing. No, the world of maps is a more relaxed one, especially if they are the old sort with a nice cloth backing.
Actually, old maps have always had a potential for mischief, and I once drove off round Ireland using one which had been bought by my father just after the war. The road ran close to the River Slaney and there was something of a mist. After a couple of slightly ambiguous junctions I realised that I was lost. Never mind, the next town on my route was Newtownbarry which couldn’t be more than two or 3 miles away. Once there I knew my way. I set out in what I imagined to be the right direction.
It was then that the oddest thing happened. Readers of Edgar Allan Poe will remember his story about a train which simply disappears from the tracks. Newtownbarry seemed to have just disappeared from the road. I found, at Bunclody, the road which according to the map led through the centre of Newtownbarry, but no sign to that town in either direction. I drove five miles down the road one way: then five miles the other. Nothing! I began to wonder what could have happened to remove the town. Bombing was out as my map was post war and anyway the Germans did not bomb Southern Ireland. Perhaps it had been razed to the ground in the course of some particularly vicious local feud. That was unlikely as the people of Wexford always seemed nice enough. Perhaps, then, the devout behaviour of the inhabitants had resulted in them (together with their buildings) being snatched up to heaven Elijah-style.
That too struck me as a little improbable, so I began to wonder if the problem was with me or my vehicle – a leprechaun in the boot perhaps or, more prosaically, an ability to drive past a town in the mist without noticing it. I didn’t find Newtownbarry that evening, but luckily happened on a signpost to my final destination which took me to where I was staying . When, next morning, I asked my hostess what had happened to Newtownbarry she looked at me with surprise. “It changed its name to Bunclody just after the war,” she replied.
Still, that shouldn’t happen with up-to-date maps, and it was in a spirit of confidence that I recently opened the road atlas on my knee as we crossed a lovely tract of French countryside. Now then, where were we?
There wasn’t much difficulty in identifying the road. We had just passed a little village and there it was, marked on the map. The more difficult question was whether we were travelling east or west. Some people have an instinct for such things but others do not, and those of us who fall into the second category have to rely on clues. It is easy enough on a fine day. Then, like an eighteenth century navigator you can deduce where north is by combining the time of day and the position of the sun. Actually you can be quite precise because there is a mathematical rule that if you hold your watch so that the small hand points towards the sun, the north/south meridian lies halfway between the small hand and 12 o’clock. It isn’t completely fail-safe because you still have to work out which end of your meridian is which, something which can be a challenge in the early evening after a couple of glasses of wine. When clouds hide the sun, the rule is if no use at all.
It is then that you have to resort to cunning and, like a modern Crocodile Dundee, pick up the signs from your immediate surroundings. In London that is easy because every street numbers away from Charing Cross. A quick glance at the house numbers and you will soon know which road leads to the centre and which will take you out to the M25. In the countryside, however, things are different. There the trick is to depend upon the lichens. Generally in the northern hemisphere the lichens attach themselves to the north side of stones, that side being the darker and more moist. Simple then, you might think, look for the lichens and you have found the North. Unfortunately it is not as easy as that because although that is the general rule there are many exceptions. Different sorts of lichen behave in different ways so you have to begin by working out what sort of lichen you are dealing with.
Once upon a time the competent traveller would have known his lichens and possibly carried Lichens as a Guide to Navigation in the glove pocket of his car. We in the 21st century do it differently. The first step, then, is to look up “lichens” on your mobile phone and to start working out which type of lichen you’re looking at. Just a minute. “Mobile phones” did I say? How does that accord with the image of leather seats and picnic hampers on the back? Not at all. That really would be cheating.
On the other hand it is now late afternoon and a good dinner awaits in a hotel somewhere over the horizon. Should we sacrifice the dinner to the nobility of relying exclusively on maps? Perhaps another evening we will do just that, but the hotel to which we are travelling is well-known for its veal kidneys and its good Burgundy wines. Let’s just turn the satnav on and get there.
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