My first pen and ink work was done copying maps; my Dad was a surveyor, back in the days when part of the course was actually drawing out maps by hand. I still have some dried-up remnants of his mapping ink, I think. It boggled me to think that people like my Dad had gone out and looked at everything, and then come up with ways of putting that onto flat sheets of paper. The Ordnance Survey Landranger maps are real works of art, and I learnt the symbols for everything by copying then out. The curiosity provoked by maps (which took me to the local records office, as well as along many paths, and, yes, into woodlands) can work quite well on adults too; perhaps this'll provoke a lot of families to try walking to the bnext village's pub for Sunday lunch? And even if the result is that the family go out to Snodbury-on-the-marsh by car some weekend, hey that's a result too.
On a related topic, you really should check out the maps at the Oxfam bookshop. The prices aren't very high (?1.99-?5.99 unless it's something very valuable, like an old Baedecker) ... on the other hand, there's a serious danger of your collection spiralling out of control the moment you get a regular supplier [grin]!
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chiming
mapping nibs and firing curiosity
Date: March 18th, 2002 04:18 am (UTC)From:On a related topic, you really should check out the maps at the Oxfam bookshop. The prices aren't very high (?1.99-?5.99 unless it's something very valuable, like an old Baedecker) ... on the other hand, there's a serious danger of your collection spiralling out of control the moment you get a regular supplier [grin]!