REMEMBER MAPS? IF YOU WEREN’T born till the ‘90s, imagine printing out your satnav. The rest of us can recall wrestling with large sheets of paper that refused to return to their original folds – and some of us still keep an atlas in our cars. You can’t explore aimlessly with satnav. (I’m no Luddite: I do use GPS but avoid paying costly ISP data charges by downloading OSM maps – it’s free and you don’t need to be online.)
While last year’s road atlas is simply outdated paper, a 1930s map can be an enjoyable trip down that dusty Imagination Lane for us cartophiles, conveying images of traffic-free roads, quiet towns and empty countryside. In fact, the reality was terrible jams in Kingston or Newcastle, frequent punctures on gravel roads and filling stations closed on Sundays.