Old maps

[simonbeck8848]

Having turned 66 I am getting to the stage in life when one looks at an ever growing collection of stuff that has not been used for ages but seems too good to throw away

Especially the maps I have, beautiful O maps (many from Norway), also hiking maps (Norway, the Alps, Scotland), and most of the old OS 1:63360 maps from England, from before most of the motorways were built, and Milton Keynes was a little village to the SW of Bedford

Also some atlases, including the Times big world atlas, are paper maps really a thing of the past?

Are other map-oholics reading this? It would be heartbreaking to have to burn them, (with Gotterdamerung playing on the stereo of course), but sooner or later that is what I expect to happen (crocodile tears)

I won't be able to reply for a few weeks so dont worry if I don't reply for a few weeks
simonbeck8848

Simon Beck

[yted]

Burn them??? I'm still buying them.
But I agree that, along with newspapers and books (and handwriting!), they are not long for this world. Sad for us old folk but I suspect they won't be missed by those yet to fall in love with them.

[Gnitworp]

I'm a big fan of yours, Simon, so I thought I'd reprise a Limerick I posted on here a few years ago when you switched from 'snow art' to 'beach art', forsaking snowshoes for a rake!

Fleeting designs in the snow,
Come the next blizzard they go.
From ephemeral art
Beck will not depart
By defying the tide when it's low.

I have fond memories of running on your original Inshriach map, of which I know you were justifiably proud.

Don't precipitately burn anything, mate

[Gnitworp]

On reflection (sober), I should take my own advice not to act 'precipitately'; taking an inappropriate opportunity to publicise my pathological obsession with limericks.
More 'advice'(for me): don't post when you're drunk.
NB my admiration for your artworks etc still applies.

[ryeland of doom]

I still collect the things, although being forced out of the sport by injury a long time ago.
As a contemporary of the OP and I have a few of his maps in my collection, I am of course thinking about what to do with them. They date back over 50 years in some cases and are part of the history of the sport as well as a record of changes in forests.

When I was on Twitter I posted a few of them under #OldOrienteeringMaps and still stick some up on Mastodon now and then.

My most treasured map - the blot on the landscape: Castle Neroche 1973 SW champs. Simon will remember that one.

[Gnitworp]

Yes, I remember that one, at an alleged scale of 1:15000 for which the printer had seriously overinked the plates (hence the notorious 'blots'). I don't think Simon was involved in the mapping BTW. This was in the halcyon days of OPEN regional championships when there were 2 grades of Championship Badge achievable in M21A (as was): the hard one with Geoff Peck running, and the easy one if he didn't run

[ryeland of doom]

IIRC. Simon was the first to map the place afterwards, around 1977. He ran up a rather good black and white map.

I never ran there in an actual event. I entered a National around the turn of the century but my course avoided Neroche and it was not on the map used for it. A disappointment, but I really enjoyed my course so a very minor one at that. The mud there is something to behold.

In 1975 the Southwest Championships was held in Quantock Forest and we were treated to a splendid new map. On the northern edge there were a few cairns mapped. Apparently some were removed as Simon was starting out on his artistic career by writing on the terrain - his initials.