General Chat

Dear All

Hello


Do you use the A-Z atlas for directions when travelling by car?

and have you looked at area maps where your ancestors lived?




Take gentle care
Best wishes
Elizabeth,
xx

I love maps and can spend hours looking at them - UK maps and world atlases

I don't use a sat nav because I spent far too many years as a van driver without one and I love maps and road atlases.

For my mediaeval research I am using maps that are of a later era but there is one that is on- line that is reputed to be the first roadmap of Britain. It is called the Gough Map and you need to get your eye in to look at it because it is on an East- West projection but it is well worth a look if you like maps.

I have some old maps that I find useful. Some of the streets where my ancestors lived no longer exist, due to redevelopment. So I can see where those streets used to be. :-)

Hello Elizabeth
Yes we always have a map in the car ,plus the sat nav.Also printed out directions lol
It can get quite confusing with all three :-S
No on the ancestors.I'm not sure where mine all came from yet(I'm adopted ) but am just starting to research them :-D

I love maps and can happily browse Ordnance Survey ones for ages, looking at old villages where ancestors lived. I've bought quite a few in charity shops over the years and enjoy noting changes between their times and present day.Many areas have changed very little and I think my ancestors would still recognise much of their villages.

A couple of Christmas' ago I was given a map of the area I was born and from around that time. Gosh what alot has changed there in the way of 'sprawl' development along the south coast of UK , but I remember how it used to be and comparing the maps shows the stark differences.

Gwyn

I love old street maps, and have a few of where my ancestors lived.
I don't drive, so am usually navigating. One friend is a total technophobe - no mobile, no computer and definitely no sat-nav!
The glory of maps is it can be misread - we've found quite a few interesting places and pubs that way :-D

When I travel with my sister, we usually use a sat-nav, and she has a map of the journey on her tablet, which I am in charge of, so when she's bored with the route the sat-nav is taking us, I look at the tablet and find an alternative one.
Have to admit, when travelling to the place our brother is renovating in deepest, darkest Somerset, the sat-nav is invaluable!!

Couldn't do without printed maps - being very deaf a satnav would be useless - and very dangerous if I were tempted to look at the screen when driving! And I like to look at maps to plan in advance - do print them from the computer sometimes. Always did like maps, had some lovely jigsaws with maps which were favourites

Hello, Elizabeth :)

I love maps - old ones, new ones, ones in books.

I also love Google maps.
When looking to book a holiday, I go around the place on Google.

Last year, on Google maps, I found the Smithy in Cornwall where my g grandfather was a master blacksmith.
I could have visited the village and never found it. Much cheaper to see it on the PC :-D

We have Sat nav and maps, oh prefers the former and I check on the map out of interest. Yes have looked up the streets where some ancestors lived, fascinating.

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.

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.

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.

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

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. :-)

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.

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.

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’!

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...

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