http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29524842

Me – I flippin love OS maps.

And a nice pic for evolution of the OS

That’s cool… Actual OS fans probably already know this but I love their custom service, not even very expensive.

This is cool too:

http://maps.bristol.gov.uk/knowyourplace/

Click on ‘show spy glass’ then change the maps in the list

We went to Tenerife a few weeks ago with a 1:50k map of the place to help us out walking and biking; I love OS maps anyway but trying to use this abysmal POS 50k map made me even more appreciative of just how amazing OS maps are.

I kept thinking “this is like an OS pink map” but there was so little detail, the contours were only at 100m intervals and I’m pretty sure weren’t accurate anyway that you just couldn’t get the lay of the land like you can with an OS map. We ended up using OpenStreetMap most of the time; it was better but still miles away from an OS map.

trying to use this abysmal POS 50k map made me even more appreciative of just how amazing OS maps are.

Too true. Spanish maps are abysmal compared to OS. I honestly do think they’re the best in the world.

That is an ace picture up at the top though. A few years ago I did a 24hr adventure race and the first challenge was a little bit of orienteering using a map of the village from some time in the 1800s- really difficult!

Another big OS map fan here. Love the custom maps, saves me carry multiple maps. Am buying one for a mate who’s just moving to a new house, will get it centered on his place. My favourite country pub has such a map on the wall.

As a slight aside I only recently found out its called hte Ordnance Survey as the maps where made for the artillery so they could fire shells accurately (Ordnance = weapons)! Perhaps shouldn’t have been surprised as the Admiralty sea charts where for the Navy.

When OS moved from Southampton to the new building somewhere on the M27 I went to the old site to remove some gas engine CHP modules, had a chance to mooch around the old building, we found the old print shop were there was hundreds of map sized etched aluminium plates used for the original print process.
I believe each plate was engrave by hand which in my opinion is incredible, each engraving being a work of art in itself.

Interestingly the old building was originally built as an emergency military hospital in the event of mass casualties from a European land conflict during the Cold War

nickjb – thanks for that – great 🙂

http://maps.nls.uk/os/

dates don’t look quite right, the lowest section pre-dates 2012, I have 20 year old maps in that colour scheme….

Have a stack of OS maps, sadly quite out of date (c. 1989). Some 1″ maps as well, they re, ah, historic value I’d guess.

I may yet wallpaper my spare room with OS Maps I like them so much.

Have a stack of OS maps, sadly quite out of date (c. 1989). Some 1″ maps as well, they re, ah, historic value I’d guess.

I am still using some from the 80’s – rural roads and public rights of way haven’t changed that much

I love OS maps, I have the entire UK 1:50k set on my phone and pad, with selected areas in 1:25k. Loads of times I’ve sat in the pub with a friend who works in YHA hostels all around the country and does local walks, with the map open on my pad for whichever hostel she’s most recently worked at, checking out all the local landscape features. Also means that I can go anywhere in the UK and have footpath/byway details to hand.
Brilliant use of technology. 😀

I’ve got a reasonable stack of old non-OS maps, from the 30s and 40s. My wife picked them up in a junk shop 🙂 Fortuitously they are mostly of places I know or have lived.

I’m also a fan, and determined to make sure my boy understands them too.

I used to cover mine in sticky-backed plastic. Makes them waterproof and very, very hardwearing (if you’ve ever seen someone open a map in a gale and end up with two handful sized pieces of paper, you’ll know what I mean). The “downside” of this is that some of them are now pretty old. Roads and stuff I can live with but whole tracts of forest appearing or disappearing gets a bit confusing!

I love maps and spend hours playing on:

http://www.oldmapsonline.org/

I’ve got a few Yorkshire Dales maps from 1970’s, must have belonged to my parents. I love map/compass navigation, but for MTB you really can’t beat a gps device with OS 1:25k. I think IGN maps and Swiss maps are my favourite for pinning on the wall as pieces of art, Italian 1:25k Compass maps are the worst I’ve experienced first hand.

My lifelong ambition has always been to hire a warehouse and assemble every 1:25,000 map of the UK so as to make a massive UK map, then walk around it.

What size warehouse would I need? UK is around 1000 kms long so, er… er… 250 metres long.

Lovely. I love my maps.
I always like to own the paper O.S. map for wherever in the country I’ve ridden. Nothing like a mug of tea and biscuits& hunting for new routes or just finding out where I’ve been!
I would also like to paper a wall with them,the missus is not so keen…… 🙁

Love them…. Have noticed a few times lately, though, that the accuracy seems to be slipping so they are not infallible.

@jambalaya – – true, roads don’t go out of date but as scotroutes says, forests do 🙂

Roads do change over time. Can cause issues…. Just ask my mate when he visited me in Manchester and didn’t know about the M60…

it was on radio 2 today

assembling all purple OS maps into one

think it was about 30 metres by 20 metres you would need

bloke from OS said so

My lifelong ambition has always been to hire a warehouse and assemble every 1:25,000 map of the UK so as to make a massive UK map, then walk around it.

@globalti What a great idea 😀

@B.A.Nana

You’ve probably seen this but IGN do reprints of old maps and 3D relief maps…
I’ve always wanted one of these after seeing it in the MBMB chalet years ago…
IGN Massif du Mont Blanc Relief Map

Just been around South Wales as of 1838. Makes me rather sad, I can only imagine how beautiful it must’ve been before it got raped by industry.

I love maps and spend hours playing on:

http://www.oldmapsonline.org/

I’ll keep that for later when I’ve got a couple of hours to waste.

Top stuff… that’s another thing that’ll help me avoid doing any work 🙂

It’s only when you use maps abroad that you fully appreciate just how good OS maps are. I did an adventure race in Costa Rica last year where the maps we were given were nearly 40 years old.

The age of the maps led to a few navigational issues, like when we were riding down a rural dirt road late one night. One of my team mates asked “what’s the next turn we’re looking out for?” Me (looking at the map): “we should reach a t-junction with another small dirt road, where we need to turn left”.

In another kilometer, our t-junction revealed itself when our dirt road ended abruptly on the side of a full-on, crash barriered, streetlit, blacktopped motorway. Ah. That probably wasn’t there when the map was drawn then….

Some teams reported finding whole towns that must have sprung up over the last 40 years that weren’t on the map! It makes the occasional whinge about OS maps seem fairly insignificant, really – “this field boundary isn’t shown as quite the right shape, etc etc”.

God bless the OS.

Stopped me walking or riding off a cliff in poor conditions on more than a couple of occasions.

Not just so useful but also just so aesthetically pleasing. I can sit at a table poring over an OS map for hours.

Gradually introducing Tyred Jr to it, a joy.

The only thing that spoils them a bit now, especially in the Lakes, is that the CRoW areas are tinged orange, rather than just having their boundary marked like National Trust land, etc.

Same experiences as djtom – racing in the US on maps from 1980 with no relief shading, Tasmania with maps from 1971 (!), Cairns with maps from 1976. The only thing that doesn’t change are massive geological features, everything else is a total lottery ! Many a time it has been a ” we know where we are and we need to go in *that* direction, ignore everything else” I learnt to do that the hard way.
I love maps.
Actually i still remember riding through the outback and being tickled by the fact that the roads and the power lines marked on the map were all at 90 degrees to where we were and we were going the right way.