General Chat

We dont have a sat nav and I prefer looking at maps. I have googled all my rellies adresses and some in the north are still there like the house where my grandmother was born in 1910!

When I left England, I wrote out my route all planned from using a road atlas. I noted all the main roads, motorway junctions etc and was so easy to use.

As someone else said, I too would find it distracting looking at a screen whilst driving. You need to keep your eyes on the road all the time. Im surprised that reading a sat nav isnt classed the same as reading a text. I know it would be hands free but you still are looking away for a second.

Up here sat nav wouldnt be much use as there are so made lanes and side roads not even marked on the map.

maybe its just me, but signposts do the job perfectly. If you plan your journey the day before then really shouldnt be getting lost or if you do, you wont be that far away from your destination.

Whenever tourists walk along our road, they always knock on our door for informatiom, ie is there a bus, where is the local shop etc. But when im out, I always get asked directions. Does anyone else get asked this? My mum said it's because you look like someone who always knows where they are going lol

Florence
in the hebrides :-)

I thought it was a man's thing to stare at maps for ages. You must all have been in the Territorial Army, like me :-D :-D All that square bashing, cleaning rifles and reading maps.

Have just looked in my map box and pulled a few out. Alaska, Isle of Man OS, Scunthorpe local red book, Bedford street master, York road finder, Sardinien (about half of Sardinia), OS of Praslin in Seychelles, Picardy, Super Karte Deutschland.

Anyone want a look up? Favourites are two old OS maps of Vale of Glamorgan and Valleys. About 1850 - or 10BC (10 years before coal) :-D :-D

Meant to say that I too like looking at the areas where my relatives came from especially as my Dad's side came from some distance from where he spent his married life.

Lizx

Dear All

Hello

Thank you kindly for the very interesting replies.

It always good when people reply and I see a few new people
who I have not had contact with before.


I am glad you all liked talking about the maps and perhaps it may help your research too.


Take gentle care
My best wishes
Elizabeth,
xx

I use Mapquest.

I think they are the ones who tell you 'If you have reached so and so street, you have gone too far', which is quite helpful!

My o.h. is impatient and panics if we go astray - he doesn't always take in my instructions so we do sometimes go right round a roundabout to try again for the correct exit. If he thinks we are 'getting lost' for some reason he panics and drives faster, which is completely unhelpful. I have to say I am always able to get us out of a muddle and find a way through if we do mess up.

Lizx

If i don't know were im going its simple i just don't go

but i love Google map

:-D Lady Scozz - my attitude when told I'm the navigator!

A couple of years ago, I saw an interesting place name on a roadside, so I said 'turn right' to my driver.
We 'found' the Rollright stones, that he had visited 40 years ago, (in his vague hippy phase) and couldn't remember where they were!!

We never get lost.

We just see lots of new places :-D

I had to go to Cambridge a couple of years ago.

Usually I would get the park and ride from Trumpington but was told there would be enough parking where I was going on a Saturday so I printed off a Google route.

As we were leaving home Fred complained of backache which made me wonder if I should go at all but he insisted he would not need me at home. I was, however, a bit wound up by this.

We followed the instructions to the letter but could not find the destination at all.

Having wasted much time looking, a red street atlas was purchased which showed the destination to be on the other side of town. Of course, having spent all that time driving around and looking, we were far to late to find parking space and I was practically hysterical with being so wound up by it all that we went home.

What a waste of a bleeding day!

I like to see if the places in films or programs actually exist

I love maps, old and new, and often look up places on Google Earth or on maps and atlases, usually when something in a book or on TV or internet has piqued my interest. Tend to navigate with maps too as we don't have SatNav in the car (OH hates it too) - we use the smartphone if we need it for finding a specific road/address.

Well I no longer feel like the odd one out. I love maps and can look at them for hours.
I always did the navigation for OH who often took no notice and sailed past right turn offs and got us lost, sure that I had got it wrong. Oh what adventures we did have, ho ho. but we always got back home enventually...

;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)

We tend not to use maps while we are in out the car as we rely on the Sat Nav. It does help to look on google earth or in a map book before we go to a new place to get an idea of how far it is and in which direction.

However we often go for a countryside stroll and will take an OS one with us to make sure we know where we are going. The gradients shown are extremely useful to look at before we set out as we don’t ‘do’ hills! We’ll also pre-copy a page of an A-Z if we are trying to walk through a town/city we're not familiar with.

There’s a Cold Store not too far away from us – the number of double trailer artics who come off the motorway too early & then have to turn round is unbelievable. They’re not all ‘Foreign’!

When I was down at my mailbox yesterday a big truck and trailer unit stopped to ask me for directions. He had been over the hill to the valley directed there by his satnav or tomtom or whatever. Unfortunately there are 2 or 3 locked gates between the valley and his destination. I presume the satnav just saw the road marked on a map and assumed it was navigable to all and sundry. It was a long way to go round by the regular roads.

I have some English road map books so I can look up places that GR members mention. Also plenty of maps of NZ. I keep a couple in my vehicle, but don't often need to refer to them.

Last year, when OH was sick, the ambulance driver used SatNav to find us....... and she got lost. We live in a small town, about 5000 population.

OH was in the ambulance, with an oxygen mask on his face, and he had to give her directions on how to leave town and find the highway! On the way to the highway, she managed to find every pothole in town.

Scary.

Yes, I use all the different ways too. Last week I used Bing Maps to find nearest florist to my Auntie's house. Spoke to florist next day on phone, fab flowers for Auntie's birthday.

Next day, when Auntie phoned I got Google Earth up and described my route as I 'walked' from the florist to hers. Auntie just had the pictures in her head but what a laugh we had, especially when I couldn't see her waiting by the door :-) It certainly didn't seem like we were hundreds of miles apart. :-)

I like maps and always managed to find my way around with the aid of a road atlas, even when driving on my own.

Now we print out route directions and use those along with the road map (usually me navigating while o.h. drives) but last time we went away we borrowed his Dad's sat nav. It did come in handy at times if only to confirm we were going the right way but also it took us way off course a few times which was annoying.

I suppose a sat nav would be good if you were driving alone but could also be distracting. Useful if driving alone at night perhaps when it's hard to watch the road and see the road signs. So many are covered by overgrowth of shrubs or trees and many are too dirty to read.

I often get the road map out when watching programmes like Escape to the country or Location Location etc.


Lizx

Maybe it's a genealogy thing......... looks like we all like maps.

I have a shelf of maps, atlases etc........... and love finding the old maps on the internet.

If I find an address on a document I usually look up google maps, a bit of a thrill when I find a house still standing.

It's very interesting that so many females admit to liking maps. It's supposed to be a man thing. I love maps. Spent all my computer years at work staring at a map 8 hours a day. I have old maps,new maps but never small a-z maps in small book form. I'm on my second sat nav but only use it in conjunction with the map.

Maps - I love the pre-planning, working out the best way from A to B and writing it down in a form that I can follow/memorise if I'm on my own.

Sat-Navs have their uses, but not for me.