Magnificent new maps

My hillwalking map. It’s a faithful companion, and can’t possibly be improved. Until, quite unexpectedly, it can. [1000 words 4 mins

I’m not a connoisseur of outdoor kit. Ambleside, with its compelling rows of gear shops and outdoor emporia, leaves me cold – and not just in the sense of not being enveloped in the latest down-filled puffy trousers.

But now and occasionally, in my life on the hills, there comes along an innovation that I’ve been entirely happy not needing to have – and almost at once, can’t believe I ever managed without.

This happened, indeed it did, with fleece clothing. Wooly jumpers: okay, they got rather heavy when wet, and really did absorb an awful lot of water, and wasn’t it his wooly jumper when it got caught in his karabiner that led to Tom Patey’s fatal fall off that seastack? But if it’s good enough for a sheep, let alone Tom Patey, then it’s altogether adequate for the likes of me.

Again, a few years after that: waterproof trousers. Legs get wet, legs get dry again: this seemed entirely satisfactory. And crampons? On Scotland’s icy gullies? Whatever’s wrong with the noble art of stepcutting with the axe?

But most noticeably of all – because it’s come about, in the history of hillwalking, six separate times over: is the matter of maps.

Coleridge and his sketch map

When the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was planning his nine-day hike around the Lake District, he had to make the map himself. Which wasn’t a problem. There were people right there in Keswick who knew the way across to Wasdale: he collated all their information and sketched it together in his notebook.

Okay, so he got Ennerdale and Wasdale the wrong way around. Which didn’t matter much; finding the way was part of the fun of it, and the shepherd at the top of Eskdale could tell him how to get over into Duddon. And yes, he did lose half a day on the Dunnerdale heights, ending up back where he started off. So what? He was having a grand time of it all the same.

Jonathan Otley’s magnificent new map

But then in 1818 came Mr. Jonathan Otley, clockmaker of Keswick. Not the first to make a Lakeland map: but Jonathan was a trained surveyor, and also had a portable barometer for measuring heights with.

And he produced absolutely the last word in maps. I mean, it had everything on it: all seven radiating dales in exactly the right order. It even clarified which was which out of Sca Fell and Scafell Pikes.

Which, was this even a good idea? With farm incomes falling all the time, the shepherds of the various valleys were supplementing their income with sixpences and shillings from guiding the influx of new tourists from the cities. If it was too easy for those tourists to find out where Great Gable was, then this might have serious economic consequences.

Whatever, this map has it all Every single hill – what more could any of us possibly want for finding your way among the Lakes?

Bartholomew’s with the contour lines.

Meanwhile, away up in the Scottish Highlands on a hill called Schiehallion, a mathematician called Charles Hutton is busily inventing the contour line.

And Otley is obsolete. Actually having the shapes of the hills, right there where you could see them on the map in your hand. And colour shading to help indicate the heights as well as looking so richly greeny-brown. And those cool contour lines, every 250ft you go up. And spot heights! We never asked for spot heights, but they’re so handy aren’t they?

Here’s a bit ofmy Grandpa’s map that guided all his climbs and fellwalking through a lifetime of the Lake District. No more wandering down the wrong side of Esk Hause and ending up at the Woolpack Inn. With a compass and a bit of attention to where you’ve got to, no need to get lost again, ever.

Sometimes, you can even still find the way when the cloud comes down.

One-inch from the Ordnance Survey

And then, in the years between the wars…. And now, honestly, this is not just the best map there’s been so far, but, in all essentials, the best map there could ever be. Superb clarity, enormous one-inch-to-the-mile scale, those useful National Grid markings even if they are in those foreign kilometre things, a precision contour interval of just 50 feet, a soothing blue and brown colour scheme and classic Gill Sans italic fonts.

And if the big hills of Wester Ross, all shrouded in their rainclouds, haven’t been entirely surveyed yet – those big flat ridgetops on Beinn Dearg, not in any way resembling the real-life mountain… It all just helps keep us alert and paying attention. We need at least a little bit of original exploration in our lives, no?

Harveys

And then, some time in the 1960s, the Cuillin of Sky lose much of their mystery. Alas: it’s the end of the one place in the UK where you could wander as lost as you liked, without any clue at all as to where you might be up there or which of the spurlines descending into the mist might represent the continuation of the fabled Main Ridge.

A Harvey map, with its intimate contour detail, all clear enough you could even read it in the rain, even read it without your glasses: what more could we possibly desire?

Outdooractive and other apps

Well, perhaps we’d like a map that actually shows on it our current position, using a little blue dot, that would be tasteful? Obviously impossible – except, sometime around 2010, it went from impossible to obligatory.

Obligatory for some, at least. Not for us map and compass men and women.

Which, any road, just has to be the end of the line so far as mapping and routefinding goes. Your map not only knows the exact shape of the surroundings, and pinpoints exactly where you are in it. It’ll even tell you which way to turn, and give a little beep if you’re more than 10m off your route. Ten years ago, never knew we needed it. Ten years from now: criminally irresponsible to be using anything else. But from here on out, no further improvements can be imagined.

Well, you know: that’s exactly what they were saying back in 1821 about Jonathan Otley’s magnificent new map.

So what do you think? Is your map or app cleverer than you are yourself? Will future phones do the walking for you so you don’t even have to get wet?