A great deal off the map
Digby Anderson
COLLINS SUPERSCALE ATLAS BRITAIN NEW EDITION
Collins, f12.95, pp. 225
COLLINS ROAD ATLAS BRITAIN 1991
Collins, f5.99, pp. 139
BARTHOLEMEW-ROAD ATLAS BRITAIN 1991
Bartholomew, f5.99, pp. 145
No sensible motorist relies on a map to get WM to his destination. Recently I had to go to Tiverton to talk to some sensible ladies of the Devon ladies NFU about silly food scares. The evening before, I glanced at a rather old map and repaired to the Royal Oak. It turned out that the land- lord's wife came from Devon and soon a lively conversation broke out over the relative merits of turning left through Bicester or carrying on through Aynho. Later, there was more advice about the school further on and to the right of the main road: coachloads of children and cars, usually ineptly driven by mothers too lazy to walk their children to school, turn across it causing mayhem. 'And of course, the road is still up south of Bicester'. After the NFU ladies, there was time to find the cider farm in a small hamlet which the roadside swede seller told us about. The hamlet was not on the map so the swede man drew us a rather nice one.
The car broke down on the way back and the RAC man who towed us home did just the same, glanced at a map then asked us for directions. Just home there was a
telephone call from 'the young people' coming for a weekend: they wanted direc- tions. Naturally they were warned about the standstill at the junction of the M25 and Ml: it looks like a wide and fast road on all three of these maps. Then there is the bend by Husbourne Crawley where so many guests mistakenly turn left: I now know why — the map makers follow the road number allocators and make it look as if following the road means going left. More oral advice is needed about the double roundabouts in the village. None of these things, the things that matter, are on the maps. Nor do the maps show Norfolk sugar-beet lorries suddenly turning, where a non-motorway lavatory may he found or which roads are most frequently used by those most evil of vehicles, caravans, in pairs, one at 40 mph passing another at 38.
The maps show lots of other things: distances, road categories, steep hills, radio stations, pre-Roman remains and military installations. There are town plans and all the usual things, and improved each year. The Superscale is obviously bigger than the other two and very clear: it makes a particularly good job of the most difficult areas, such as London. Necessarily in a mass publication, there is just too much information, masses of things one doesn't want to know about horrid places one would not dream of visiting.
There is not much to choose between the two at £5.99. I rather liked the Collins because the pages (of my copy at least) are in a rather unconventional order with some given twice and some not at all. All the land that might have been covered in a more pedestrian atlas by pages 26-42 has been obliterated in a move which makes Saddam Hussein look like an angel. There are two Cornwalls and no Beds/Bucks border, where I live. That should cut the traffic in the village. And it's rather fun, this creative re-arranging of the country. The consequent page juxtapositions should encourage hordes of Bournemouthians to take a half-hour trip just up the road to Spalding and get some bulbs. Unfortunat- ely, all this has probably been corrected by now.
But the overall point is that road maps, excellent in their way, really very good
value for money, pleasant to browse through and think of where one might go, good for helping out when you are lost, can only .be a general guide to a route. Their standardised mass information needs to be fleshed out and particularised with friendly gossip and locals' tips. Which is why these 1991 maps are not really much better than those of '90 or '89. Of course some roads have changed, but your host will tell you
that. Most of us do not need to buy new maps each year. I have a leak in the boot of the car where my old map lives: the maps won't fit in car pockets or shelves. Shef- field, which I hate, is covered with mould. When Kent starts rotting, it'll be time to buy a new road map.
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