Before this year I had only ever drawn one proper orienteering map before, back in my NGOC days. It was of Cleeve Hill and it wasn’t very good. I’m no artist, the base maps were two OS sheets, one of 1:10 000, the other the old six-inch to the mile version, 1: 10560. This meant that the contours didn’t meet where the maps overlapped and any complicated bits, like those round the old quarries, were left as white space. Air photos were prohibitively expensive. Pushed for time and a novice surveyor, I didn’t make a particularly good job of interpreting and filling in the gaps. Later versions of this map had Harvey’s pg plot, which made the mapper’s job much, much easier. Drawing was done with pen and ink on drafting film
After that, I was happy to do the odd bit of surveying, but I left the drawing to other, more fastidious souls. When OCAD came out, I played with the demo versions and sometimes used them to set courses or even to amend original map files, but nothing more.
Until this autumn. Di Tilsley, on the verge of departing for New Zealand for the winter, was asked by a local school if she could do an update of their school map. She didn’t have time, but contacted me as the nearest club member, to see if I could help. They might even pay me for my efforts. At the same time, I realised I needed to update the Clayesmore map before the upcoming night event and I discovered that Erik Peckett was running a mapping course for Sarum involving the use of the now free OCAD6 program and they had room for a few more.
And suddenly, I had drawn two maps. Two quick visits to the primary school, one to survey, and one to check and correct, followed by the Clayesmore map from scratch. Emboldened by the ease of drawing now I understood how to use OCAD properly, I had decided to redraw both maps from scratch rather than modifying the existing files.
So what now. Well, with the increasing popularity of Sprint-O, this summer we are hoping to organise some Wednesday evening events mainly using updated versions of the the street maps which John Warren produced during the Foot & Mouth outbreak in 2001 which kept us out of the forests for four months or so. I thought I would try doing my own map of Sturminster Newton.
‘Stur’ may not be an Italian hill town like the ones Helen Bridle was running in early last year on the Park World Tour but it has quite an interesting street network. There have been lots of new houses built recently on the northern side of the town, but with the help of Google maps and aerial photos from Windows Live Local, I was able to plot most of the new roads which have appeared. The architecture of Prince Charles’ Poundbury has a lot to answer for round here but it has at least made the newer housing developments more interesting and produced a few interesting alleyways. The town council has also recently upgraded all the footpaths, signs and gates and with the town sitting on a ridge surrounded by the Stour on three sides, it also gives us the opportunity of orienteering on the water meadows down by the river.
I thought mapping it all might keep me out of mischief and give me a bit of exercise over the Christmas period. And so it did until today. By then I had completed mapping all the urban areas, and the footpath network All that remained was the new developments still going up on the site of the old cattle market of happy memory, which should be completed by the summer, and the riverside meadows which I had set aside to map between Christmas and the New Year.
However I had not reckoned on the weather being quite as inclement. By the time there was a gap in the clouds, the Stour had burst its banks (as it often does at this time of the year) and all the areas I needed to check were under two feet of water. So the project is on hold until all has dried out again. Still, there’s no rush. And hopefully, the water will have gone down by summer.
