How I agree with Ned Vessey (Scrawled bits of paper and an A-Z: How I went cold turkey on Google Maps, 11 December). I’m sure Google Maps has its uses, but for planning and then walking a route, especially cross-country, Ordnance Survey maps are invaluable. They helped Ned to appreciate walking around Bristol, and I agree that a town plan can be great in a built‑up area. But for walking cross‑country, an OS Explorer map shows every little footpath and track. A mobile phone’s tiny screen cannot show you the big picture of how to get from A to B.
I fear that map reading is becoming a lost art. Driving around with a satnav gets you there (usually), but with little appreciation of what has been passed on either side of the road. If phone signals are lost, most people would soon be lost too – and, without the ability to read a map, would remain lost. Thank you Ned, for speaking up for real maps!
Barbara Foster
Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire
• Ned Vessey could have got the best of both worlds had he downloaded the OS maps to his phone. My husband died two years ago, leaving me with 40 Wainwrights still to climb. I downloaded the OS maps, searched for the hill I needed, and – remembering from the times I had nodded and agreed the route that contour lines together meant steep – picked the most suitable track. I switched off the voice in my head that said: “Put that thing away, we do paper.” In an urban setting, it shows as many interesting things as up a mountain. I took paper maps, but rarely got them out. Now I have finished that list, I can try any other without extra expenditure.
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife
• Ned Vessey wonderfully proves what many of us have known for years. To better know a place, a book, an art movement – probably any subject – the best thing is to lose one’s way in it so that you have to consider it more closely.
David Cockayne
Lymm, Cheshire
• In Devon we still use paper maps. You get detail of the trees, history, geology and access, whatever the phone signal. A journey is so much more than a destination.
Mike Harrison
Croyde, Devon
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