spring 2018 maplines update€¦ · visit the bcs website at spring 2018 / maplines • 3 welcome...

THE MAGAZINE OF THE BRITISH CARTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

UK £3.00www.cartography.org.uk

UKMappingFestivalupdateMaplines

SPRING 2018

Spring 2018 / Maplines • 3Visit the BCS website at www.cartography.org.uk

Welcome to a fantastic edition crammed packfull of extraordinary articles on all sorts oftopics – All concerning Cartography! There is

Art, Military History, Tourism and Marine mapping.And on this sad day of UK Science Week ‘18, hearingabout the death of Professor Hawking – I believeSpace has been mapped – down to the finest detail!

We couldn’t have completed this edition without the

articles from you! So please keep them coming in [email protected] and if any of you wouldlike to be an Editor, we are always looking for keeneyes! Book reviews and reading amazing insights intothe Cartographic World. Exciting news in - thepreparations for the UK Mapping Festival inSeptember are in full swing! Happy Mapping!

Alice, Louisa and Martin

2 • Spring 2018 / Maplines Visit the BCS website at www.cartography.org.uk

From the Editors

Ihope by now you’ve had anopportunity to look at thedetails of our 2018 awards on

the Society website. I’d like toparticularly draw your attention tothree of this year’s awards forwhich 2018 carries specialsignificance:

This year sees the first award of•the Garsdale Design Award for3D mapping which is looking for“interesting, informative andexciting” 3D cartography.Entries can depict real orimaginary places and use anytechnique or medium.Our New Mapmaker Award•(supported by ESRI UK) hasbeen relaunched for 2018 andwill now be open to thosestudying for GCSE or A-Levelwith entries needing todemonstrate the use of GIS orweb-mapping to view, analyseand interpret places and data.Our Children’s Map•Competition (supported by theUKHO) is held every otheryear to alternate with theICA’s Barbara PetchenikChildren’s Competition whichis held in conjunction with thebiennial InternationalCartographic Conferences.2018 is a year for the BCScompetition and it is open, infour age bands, to childrenand young people between 7and 16. This year’s theme is‘Sustainable Seas’.

In all cases, see our website forcomplete details of these andthe other Society awards. Welook forward to seeing yourentries.

Recent news around furthersurveying in the Indian Oceanfollowing the loss of Malaysianairliner MH370 in 2014 hasagain highlighted just howdifficult it is to gather bathymetryin the deep ocean. It’s becominga truism that the surface ofnearby planets – especially Mars– has been mapped in moredetail than we’ve yet achievedfor the whole of our own Earth –or at least the 71% that liesbeneath the sea.

A recent estimate of the task tosurvey the entire ocean bed –even for a 100m grid – thoughtthat it would take a single ship1,000 years to complete. We cancompare this with the 11 daymission back in February 2000that allowed the Shuttle RadarTopography Mission (SRTM) togather sufficient data to produce aone arc second (30m at theequator) elevation model for 80%of the world.

In this context, it has beeninteresting to see news of tworecent initiatives:

The joint project between•GEBCO and the NipponFoundation which is intended toensure that by 2030, “Nofeatures of the accessible partsof the world ocean floor largerthan 100m remain to beportrayed.”The Shell Ocean Discovery•XPRIZE aimed at thedevelopment of innovativesolutions for the autonomouscollection of high resolutionbathymetry which would be

tested at depths of 2000m and4000m.

So just over another decadebefore we have a picture ofEarth as complete as thatgathered by the Mars GlobalSurveyor back in the 1990s.Bear in mind though that whendeep-ocean surveying beganwith the Challenger expedition inthe 1870s a single soundingcould easily take half a day tocomplete!

Richard Carpenter, BCS President

A Message from the President

ContentsThe Magazine of the British Cartographic Society (Registered Charity No. 240034)

Volume 32, 1st Issue – Spring 2018

Maplines Regularsp.08 Admin Reportp.28 UKCC Report

Also in this issue. . .p.04 BCS Map Design Groupp.06 3D Data Formats for GISp.08 UKMF Updatep.09 A-Z Glasgowp.12 UK Mapping Festival 2018p 16 BCS ICA Awardsp.22 Restless Earth Reportp.23 Whale Spottingp.26 Mapping the Borders

Advertising in Maplines

Consider the Society's magazine a shop window to promote yourcompany, event, course or publication to the mapping community.

To submit editorial, contact the Editors: [email protected]

For display advertising, contact Sharon Robson:[email protected] or +44 (0)1438 352617

All photography and illustrations in this issue have been provided toMaplines by the article authors unless stated otherwise. Allcontributors to Maplines are responsible for assuring that they havepermission to use images and content. Please addcredits/acknowledgements as appropriate.

If you would like to sponsor a Maplines Quiz please contact theEditors for more information.

Editorial Contact Details:

Editorial Team: Louisa Keyworth, Alice Gadney &Martin [email protected]

Deadline for copy for the Summer 2018 edition is 11 June 2018.The views expressed in Maplines are those of the Editors andContributors and not necessarily those of the BCS.

© The British Cartographic Society 2018

Publishers: Geomares Publishing UK LtdUnit A2 Mindenhall Court, High Street, Stevenage, Herts, SG1 3BG, UKwww.geomares.nl

Printing: The Manson Group, St Albans

Setting in PlaceBonnie Craig describes howshe created a map made ofjellied sweets.

10

SOE and Maps22 colleagues travelledthrough France looking atvarious historic maps.

13

Loving a Map of VincentJane Tomlinson has createda loving map in honour ofVincent van Gogh.

18

Marvellous MapsHumphrey Butler attempts todo justice to Britain’s mostpicturesque landscapes.

20

A review of a recent trip tosee ancient rock drawingsdisplaying the past.

24Journey to the Past

BCS Website Contact List

Website Coordinator: Overview and coordination:Warren Vick: [email protected]

Home page content/coordination with other membersof this team to ensure consistency throughout thewebsite and liaison with Warren Vick: Mary Spence: [email protected]

Membership/Members Directory: Shona Frost: [email protected]

Corporate members: Alan Grimwade: [email protected]

Events: Paul Naylor: [email protected]

Careers/education: Giles Darkes: [email protected]

Awards: Angela Wilson: [email protected]

Website Statistics: Warren Vick: [email protected]

Chair of Publications Committee and Maplines editor: Martin Lubikowski: [email protected]

Who’s Who entries: Alex Kent: [email protected]

For any issues, problems or proposals regarding thewebsite, the first point of contact should be WarrenVick. For any specific requests for items to beincluded into sections of the site, please contact thepeople listed above.

Richard Carpenter

After a chance to get to knowone another, the evening kickedoff with two insights into the useof programming languages topresent geospatial data. Firstly,Steve Kingston aDeveloper/Consultant atOrdnance Survey (OS) gave usan introduction to R, D3 andPython, explaining where andwhy each may be useful in a mapdesign and map productionenvironment. I know that Stevefinds it to be a very useful time-saving workflow. This wasseamlessly followed by LuciaKocincova, a Front-end Engineerat QuantumBlack, explaining howto use the JavaScript library D3to create statistical dot maps ofcity populations by postcode andthen showing examples of herwork using D3 to makeinteractive visualisations ofTransport for London accidentdata, along with the integration ofother tools such as Google MapsAPI, HTML and WebGL.

We then moved into datamanipulation and were broughtinto the third dimension by OwenPowell, Senior Consultant atArup, showing how he uses FMEand Blender to create 3D scenesto bring his projects to life. CraigTaylor, Senior Data VisualisationManager at Ito World DesignLab, brings the data visualisationand 3D worlds together in hiswork, and showed us the latestIto in-house tools as well as arather impressive projectdemonstration video.

To close the evening, I askedJack Harrison, TechnicalConsultant at OS, to demonstratea situation where an expandedset of map design tools is mostdefinitely required. He gave anoverview of the collaborativework OS are doing with 5Gnetworks and how visualising 5Gsignals is something of a newand unique challenge.

Every single presentation had somuch wow factor but all for verygood and sound reason. Thework of our five speakers is trulyinspirational and I am so pleasedthey were kind enough to give uptheir time and travel to our eventto share their knowledge with ourspecial interest group. I amdelighted with how the eveningwent, everyone seemed to enjoy

it, hopefully everyone tooksomething away from it to helpthem with their own designprocesses, and we saw someproper kick ass visuals that I ammore than happy to call maps.We are currently looking intoways to share the slides on theBCS website.

What’s Next?

We hope to bring to you moremap design themed events in thenear future. With the inaugural UKMapping Festival coming toLondon this September, we areexploring the possibility of aconference workshop session on‘Map Design, Effects andAnimation’ (tbc).

In the meantime, I wouldencourage you to use the hashtagor search ‘BCS Map DesignGroup’ on Twitter or Facebookand share your work, ideas,questions and knowledge. Mapdesign is obviously a keycomponent of cartography, soplease also share your work inMaplines and The CartographicJournal publications.

By Christopher Wesson,Convenor of BCS Map Design GroupFind us on social media, search‘BCS Map Design Group’ or#BCS_MDG

BCS Event

Visit the BCS website at www.cartography.org.uk Spring 2018 / Maplines • 5

Map Design Group wasrelaunched in 2017 underthe hashtag #BCS_MDG

with the aim of providing a socialforum to share and engage withmap design and map designers.We have been working closelywith the wider ProgrammeCommittee to deliver events thatrepresent interest and value to anever-growing map designcommunity, starting with thereturn of Better Mapping and theintroduction of ‘group’ eventsopen to all.

Better Mapping

Better Mapping took place inManchester last November. Withso many different groups ofpeople involved in visualisinggeodata, never before has theimportance of understanding thefundamentals of good map designbeen greater. With the help of theGIS special interest group andsponsors, we have had a numberof successful workshops in recentyears and in Manchester wereturned to a seminar format.

With presenters from Europa

Technologies, Garsdale Design,Global Mapping, Harper Collinsand Steer Davies Gleave, as wellas freelancers; we were able tooffer specific expertise fromdifferent parts of the map designprocess to form a day of seminarsessions designed to offer adviceon improving the quality, accuracyand effectiveness of maps.

Since the seminars, we (BCS)have been working closely withfriends at the Royal GeographicSociety (RGS) and the Associationfor Geographic Information (AGI),to evaluate the event andfeedback with the aim of offeringan improved, structuredprogramme going forward.

Map Design Tools

For many years the digital era ofcartographic design has revolvedaround graphic design packagesand GIS. Sure there’s been amove to web and application-based mapping too, but anyonefollowing map makers on Twitterwill have seen that the mapdesign world has become braver,more cutting-edge and

increasingly immersive.Developers, Consultants andData Visualisation Designersworking with geospatial data havebrought a whole new world oftools to map design.

The now traditionalcartographer’s toolkit hasn’t beenreplaced, more expanded. Thereare now greater possibilities inhow we can share geographicinformation; with interaction, 3D,animation and so on; alongsidean increasing number of differentways to get there.

In light of this, in July, the BCSMap Design Group held anevening of short talks on thesubject at London’s UrbanInnovation Centre – to which anenormous gratitude goes toGeovation (Isabel and Alex inparticular), all the speakers andtheir employers, and AlicjaKarpinska of Ordnance Survey,without whom this event could nothave taken place. Making theevent open to all allowed mapdesigners from all backgrounds tocome together and share boththeir work and their ideas.

BCS Event


BCS Map Design Group#BCS_MDG

viewed as a solid, for exampleswith wrecks and landscapes. Thisis often done using a Poissonwrapping method, similar to the2D raster interpolation but in 3Dto create a “3D TIN” thatencompases the external shell ofthe point cloud. The resulting“model” is similar to that youwould get from Google Sketchupor build for 3D printing, in that itcan have extremely good detailprovided the resolution of thepoint cloud is high enough.

Many GIS software handles pointclouds, such as Bentley Systems,Esri ArcGIS Pro & Desktop, QGISand GRASS. All of these can alsobe used to do 3D analysis as wellas some data formatting.

Possibly the most efficient way ofmanipulating and convertingbetween point cloud data formatsis the open source softwareCloudCompare, with this you canalter, edit and transform largepoint clouds as well as import andexport between popular formats.This software is often used inconjunction with MeshLab(another Open Source software)for the conversion of point cloudsto mesh models and modelsculpting. These softwarepackages are extremely efficientfor thinning (subsampling) andadding RGB values from imagery.

Land Survey

Using the good old fashionedtheodolite and RTK, we digitisevector features on the ground withheight attributes. More often thannot, it gets wasted on the CADusers and it is only seen a fewmonths down the line with all thecoordinate values strippedout…Not all the time though, thedata can be digitised out in thefield to high accuracy and thenexported almost directly to anyGIS. There are even a few GIScentric survey tools like the EsriArcPad or the QGIS plugin ROAMwhich allow you to capture the datastraight into a GIS readable format.

3D vector lines, points andpolygons are a traditional way of

working with 3D data and can beused to create 3D plans andsurfaces (using 3Dlines/contours).

The great thing about this methodis that your data is in GIS formatswhich are universally read, likeshapefile, postgis, fgdb orspatialite and can therefore beused in almost all GIS.

General

Truth is that in this modern,geospatial age, many of the GIScan utilise 3D data in many of the

common interchange formats.Working with 3D has no longerbecome the complexmathematical tour de force that itonce was as GIS is moving withthe times and supporting agrowing list of vertical datum.

So, let me let you into a little secretthat will turn you into a 3Dsuperstar overnight, you won’t likeit... Metadata! You see, the mostcomplex issue with 3D is similar tothe issue within the 2D plane. Ifyou don’t know what coordinatesystem you are working with, thenyou have already got the mapwrong. When working in 3D, thisissue is magnified 9 fold and that isbefore you factor in issues like theunits as our American colleaguestend to use for their vertical datum,like feet, survey feet or meters(metres) height or depth (oh yes,they love to confuse us!).

This is why metadata is vital, withfull knowledge of the coordinatesystem, both horizontal andvertical (and what direction, depthor height) we can sometimessimply use tide tables or knownconversions to simply adjust thedata between datum.

On that fun note, let’s put a holdon things and look forward to thenext (and potential last?) Piece ondisplaying and ways we showthese 3D formats.

By Nicholas Duggan

3D GIS


In the previous piece, we sweptover how (3D) data is captured,the aim of this article is to

cover how to use the data whichhas been captured.

Before I begin, I need to explainthat where this data is captured in3D, you would expect to then usethe data in 3D but this is not

always the case. For years, we,the geospatial specialists, havehad to analyse this enriched 3Ddata within clunky 2D machines,all the time using compromisesand workarounds to obtainresults. So this piece will coverthe way we commonly use thissurveyed data in both 2D and 3Dwithin a GIS, then my hope is todiscuss display and visualrepresentation in the next piece.

Aerial Survey

Data is collected as stereo imageryor straight forward imagery.

Any georeferenced imagery,captured by either of thesemethods can be processed usingphotogrammetry software likePix4D and Drone2Map to producepoint clouds relative to the rastercell size and 3D mesh similar tothose draped imagery 3D featuresyou see in Google Earth.

Basic georeferenced imagery isalso good for classifying andextracting features. By usingraster classification algorithms we

can extract land classification,vegetation or change (byanalysing multiple rasters of thesame area).

Stereo imagery, as well as beingused to extract point clouds, asmentioned above, is the primarymethod for obtaining 3D vectorfeatures. There are many feature

extraction software to extractvector features but due to the lackof consistency, many expertsprefer to use 3D drawing tools tomanually create the 3D vectordata from the imagery.

Normally working with stereoimagery has required specialistphotogrammetry software but atthe end of 2017, Esri enabledtheir flagship software ArcGIS Proto be able to use and create datafrom this form of imagery.

LiDAR, Laserscan & Sonar

Most point cloud capture systemswill have its own proprietaryrecording format. This isn’tbecause they want you to buy intotheir eco-system (not all the time),this is mostly due to the way theirsystems capture the data and howthe data can be “compressed” toprocess faster.

Some of the better known formatsare; Faro - .fls & .fws, Leica - .pts& .ptx, Reigl - .3dd & AutodeskRecap - .rcp. Obviously, there areother formats for other systems

but in general most point cloudsystems also export in .las or .lazformat, which has widely beenaccepted as the standard(onshore) format.

Using point clouds used to be achore, you would have to interpolatethe points into a surface raster orTriangulated Irregular Network (TIN)

so that you could analyse the 3Ddata on a 2D plane. The methodworks well and is still widely used,though many GIS now have pointcloud tools or .las file readers(LiDAR, Laserscan, sonar and evenxyz can all be used as .las format).

By using the point cloud as araster or TIN we are able toanalyse interactions and alsosurface constraints and variables,for example, measuring the slope,height of comparable intersectingpoints, line of sight or visibleareas from a point (usedcommonly in renewables to seewhich turbines are visible topopulation and the landscape).

The issue with using the rasterand TIN methods are whereobjects like trees and shipwrecksoccur as there is no way to seethe information which lies beneaththe initial surface (in survey it iscalled the “first return”).

In recent years, with the advent ofOpenGL, we have been able tovisualise and analyse point cloudsin true 3D, so we can see boththe surface but also subsequentpoints, where they occur. Thisway we can get more accuratetree analysis of both the upperand lower canopy. Of course, thisisn’t just limited to trees but theyare the best way to comprehendthe 3D issues that point cloudsused in a 2D plane present.

Recently it is common to make 3Dmodels or meshes from pointclouds, for calculating volumes orrendering for visual analysis, it issometimes clearer to see when

3D GIS


Using 3D Data Formats for GIS

Extractingrooftoppotential(yellow)from aerialimagery

Land surveyor with digitiser. Imagecourtesy of Ordnance Survey

Getting the vertical datum right wasessential in analysing this wreck

At Geographers’ A-Z MapsCompany we have beenlooking through our map

archives to see how sections ofGreat Britain have changedthrough the 20th century. In thisarticle, we shall have a brieflook at the extensiveregeneration of Glasgow west ofthe City Centre, an areapreviously home to GovanGraving Docks and PacificQuay, the largest docks on theClyde. This area is now home toGlasgow Science Centre andBBC Scotland HQ.

Glasgow City has been subject tolarge urban regeneration mostfamously seen in the “The BruceReport” published in 1945. Thereport influenced an intensiveprogramme of regeneration andrebuilding including, most vividly,the M8 motorway which is theonly motorway in the UK todirectly serve and bisect a largeurban area. The M8 can be seencrossing the Clyde as theKingston Bridge in the latest2016 map.

The area was first mapped byGeographers’ A-Z Map Companyin the 1951 Glasgow PremierMap. Glasgow was one of thelargest cities in the world duringthe 19th century and wasdisputably known as “theSecond City of the Empire” afterLondon. The city became thepre-eminent shipbuilding andone of the biggest tradingcentres of the world.

Pacific Quay

Prince’s Dock was formallyopened by the Duchess of Yorkin 1897. The dock basin was the

largest on the River Clydeoperating as one of the principalunloading destinations for tradethroughout the British Empire.However, it ceased to be used asa commercial dock by the ClydePort Authority during the 1970sas the volume of shipping usingthe Upper Clyde declined withthe onset of containerisation.

The majority of the Prince’sDock area was infilled in the1980s for the 1988 GardenFestival, and part of the Festivalsite was redeveloped forhousing on its completion.Festival Park is an area ofgreen space left over from theGarden Festival.

Today, Pacific Quay includes:Glasgow Science Centre•BBC Pacific Quay, BBC•Scotland headquarters andstudiosSTV, headquarters and studios•for the Scottish ITV networkScottish Exhibition and•Conference Centre

Govan Docks

To the immediate west of

Pacific Quay lies the formerGovan Graving Docks. Gravingdocks are a classic form of drydock. These docks were openedin stages from 1875-1897 tocater for the inspection andrepair of the bottom of ships.These docks remained in useuntil 1988.

The area is currently beingconsidered for development,perhaps to be preserved forindustrial/maritime heritage.

A-Z Maps produce a wallpaper ofGlasgow and we have a host ofarchive and current map data thatis available for purchase; pleaseget in touch with us to get moreinformation.

Find the wallpaper on ourwebsite: www.azdigital.co.uk/products/az-map-wallpaper/

All images reproduced bypermission of Geographers’ A-ZMap Co Ltd. ©Crown Copyrightand database rights 2016. OS100017302

By Simon Kettle, New BusinessDevelopment Manager

A-Z Glasgow


If you haven’t heard, the UKMapping Festival 2018 willtake place between 2-7

September, with the threeconference days at the ILECcentre in West London betweenTuesday & Thursday (4-6September). Make sure it is inyour diary!

The three conference themeswith be Mapping for the Future(run by BCS and SoC), GIS andGeo analytics (AGI as thepartner), and 3D, Imagery andSurvey (with BARSC).

Each conference day will have 12talks in 4 sessions, each being 25minutes, running from 9:30 to17:00. In parallel there will be 4workshops aimed at being handson training events.

The free-to-attend exhibitionand activity area will be laid outin the form of a street scene. Itwill include ‘shops’ as exhibitionbooths, vehicles, a food court,signs and activities including anaugmented reality app of theexhibition and large screendisplays. We will be invitinglocal educationalestablishments to take part inan After School Club, includinga Geo Fair and London busactivity centre.

At the end of each day there willbe a ‘celebrity’ speaker tellingus why they love maps. So,there will be something foreveryone!

There will be a number ofparallel events running in other

locations, including a map-themed pub crawl, quiz, awardsdinner, picnic on HamspteadHeath and visit to the ChurchillWar Rooms.

The full programme comes out inMarch and there is a fullpromotional and social mediacampaign which will start then.

The UK Mapping Festival isexpected to attract over 2,000visitors and conferenceattendees. For many eventsplaces are limited, so you willhave to book early to avoiddisappointment. For moreinformation and all the detialsyou need, please go towww.ukmf18.org

Seppe Cassetari

UKMF Update & Admin Report


UK Mapping Festival2018 Update

Membership

Thank you to all our members whohave renewed their membership for2018. And of course, a bigwelcome to our new members.

Affiliate Members:Nicholas Hinchliffe, Harriet Phillips & Wyn Lloyd

Full Members: Sam Tenenbaum,Marina Cofino, Daisy Atkin,George Firth, Kevin Ford, John Kennedy & Marion Perrett-Pearson

Student Members: Peter Evans,Wei Zhang, Matthew Law, Mohd Shahmy Mohd Said &Haonan Zhang

Please note: Subscription year isfrom 1 January to 31 December.

Renewal / JoiningMethods

Through the website:•www.cartography.org.ukPersonal Cheque made•payable to The BritishCartographic Society – pleasewrite your membership numberon the back.Debit/Credit card details sent•with your renewal form.

Discounts

Great news – we have anotheroffer for our members! 30%discount on books from

www.crcpress.com,www.routledge.com &www.tandfonline.com. Head to ourwebsite, log-in and retrieve thediscount code from the membersarea. Don’t forget to check otherdiscount codes while you are there!

We are reachable by telephoneand email Monday to Thursday9:00am – 5:00pm and Friday9:00am – 4:30pm. We are happyto help any members with anyissues or queries they may haverelated to the Society.

Email: [email protected]: 01223 894 870

Deimante Janaviciute,BCS Administration

Admin Report

The ChangingFace of

Glasgow

Above: A-Z Maps:Glasgow 1951

Left: A-Z Maps:Glasgow 2016

to its transparency andresponsive nature: it changes withtemperature, light, time and touch,and when left it may shrink, growmould, smell and deliquesce,perfectly representing the senseof change that she wanted toportray. Working with atransparent material meant thatOlivia could use many layers torepresent simultaneously the past,present and future.

The final piece used 22 litres oftransparent food-grade gelatine,which was poured over a largeoval dining table that containedan enlarged section of an 1895OS map (Lancashire 60NE).Significant hills were set into thejelly, as were traces of pre-1895stories, such as the possible siteof a medieval village.

As she was working with food, andpresenting it on a dining table,Olivia used culinary tools to createthe features on the map during theperformance: icing piping tubesand nozzles for trees and hedgesand to fill ponds with colouredjelly, cheese wires to cut walls andhouses, cutlery to make footstepsand furrows, pastry wheels to cut

roads, food colouring to paint ontracks and fields.

Olivia experimented with ways touse the jelly expressively: thin layersof dense set jelly were cut in ribbonsand rolled out to be new roads;muted rustic hues were mixed tocontrast with the commercial jellycolours that were used for futurehousing developments; in certainlights imperceptible marks on thejelly’s surface cast visible shadowsbeneath.

The map was performed twice inPreston – at Bartle Hall Hotel andthe Harris Museum and Art Gallery.Bartle Hall Hotel is on the jelliedmap, which presented anopportunity to invite very localpeople and collect more informationabout that specific area.

At the Harris Museum and ArtGallery the map was performedas part of an exhibition ofpaintings by local artist EdwinBeattie (1845–1917), who paintedPreston at a time when the towncentre was being swept away tomake way for new buildings. LikeBeattie’s work, the jellied mapfocused on a part of Preston

undergoing rapid development –exploring the sense of a changingplace. Once it was finished, thejellied map was left in situ forseveral days, where it could melt,mould and deliquesce.

Taking part in the creation of thejellied map gave people a sense ofbeing empowered in that landscapeand brought about differentresponses. Some visitors describedthe process of carving up the fieldsto create new roads as distressing,whereas the process of building thenew homes – deciding where theyshould be and what the residentswould need – gave some residentsa new perspective on the proposeddevelopments.

Olivia’s research andperformances have started manyconversations – building herknowledge of the area and takingher to places that she wouldn’totherwise have found. A localhistorian and metal detectoristbrought finds and photographs toOlivia and they spent a dayexploring the area. She hasvisited local residents who cameto the performance at Bartle HallHotel to see some of the points

Jellied Map


When artist Olivia Keithwas commissioned byPreston-based arts

organisation In Certain Places tocreate artwork in response to theCity Deal – a £430m, 10 yearinfrastructure scheme to deliverjobs and 5,332 new homes to thecity – she discovered an area richin stories and memories.

Her project, Traces of Place,focused on a rural area in north-west Preston that is set to betransformed over the next fewyears. In considering the proposedchanges to the landscape, Oliviawondered what would be lost–footpaths, field boundaries, localplace names, trees and wildlife.She was also interested in whatdetails would ‘make it through’ tothe new development – might thestreet names reference the historyof the ground they stood on, orwould new residents meet thepeople who had once walked thelocal footpaths?

Olivia wanted to record some of

the area’s history before it wasdestroyed, and she set out tocreate a map as a way to recordinformation and stories: thetangible and intangible, personaland collective, historical andgeographical. She hoped thatplotting this precious informationon a map would preserve it forplanners and residents.

Olivia began a process ofgathering and recording stories,initially by walking the area,talking to people she met andreading. She produced large-scale drawings of the arealayered over enlarged sections ofthe 1895 OS map of the placesshe was drawing. Doing thesedrawings in situ lead to manyconversations with local residents.These drawings were exhibited ina local café, where Olivia wasbased for two weeks – collectingmore stories and holding eventsto bring people who wereinterested in the area together.

Olivia collated these contributions –

including words, photos, drawingsand poems – on an online map:tracesofplace.blogspot.co.uk. Thismap is updated as new roads andhouses appear, and the stories andmemories become more powerfulas these developments happen.For example, the field where ninehares were once seensimultaneously has now been builton, but the photo of the haresremains on the map.

As well as recording and sharingstories, Olivia wanted her artworkto show the changes to thelandscape – from 1895 to theplanned future development. Shedecided to present the map as a5.5 hour performance: the first 4.5hours were devoted to creating thefeatures on the 1895 map andmaking the minor adjustments tobring it up to 2017, and the finalhour of the piece was created bythe audience in a flurry of activitythat represented the next 15 years.

Olivia chose an unusual materialfor her map: jelly. She was drawn

Jellied Map


Setting in Place:The Making of aJellied Map ofNether Bartle

As many of you will be aware,the annual conference formatis changing this year. We are

taking the event to London andrunning 3 consecutive one dayconferences at the ILEC conferencecentre near West Brompton. Themiddle day – Wednesday – will bededicated to Cartography, Tuesdayis given over to GIS and geospatialissues and Thursday will be for 3D,imagery and survey. The event willalso include activities, visits andtalks either side of these 3 days,running from 2-7 September(Sunday-Friday). The whole event isbeing called the UK MappingFestival 2018 (www.ukmf18.org).

Because of the change in formatthere will not be the usual desk topexhibition space for Corporatemembers of BCS. There will be alarge activity area, laid out like astreet scene with ‘shops’ that will beavailable as exhibition space. Thesewill be charged at £1,600 per day or£3,600 for 3 days. BCS Corporate

members may book these for thediscounted rate of £1,400 per day or£3,000 for all 3 days.

The walls around the street scenewill be covered in images thatenhance the scene but it willcontain panels that will be used topromote sponsors and corporatemembers. The panels will cost£100 for the day but all BCSCorporate Members are beingoffered a panel for the CartographyConference day for free.

The panel will consist of a spaceabout 1.5m tall by 0.75m wide,with a box for a logo, a box forproduct descriptions or marketinginformation, a box for a mapimage and space for a brochureholder. All panels will have a QRcode which will link the viewer tothe company website.

To take up the opportunity of havinga panel, you will need to book yourpanel no later than 1 April 2018,

after which BCS will not be able toguarantee availability. Thisopportunity will only be available tofully paid Corporate Members(Ordinary and Small). Attendance atthe event is not required and therewill not be space in front of yourpanel to set up a display or for anindividual to stand.

The graphics for all panels will beset-up by the organisers in advanceand printed on Vinyl for fixing to thewalls. All copy and images must besubmitted to the organisingcommittee (Ryan Harrow [email protected])by 1 June 2018. A draft panel willbe available for approval by 30 June2018 and must be approved no laterthan 15 July 2018. Organisersreserve the right to cancel theopportunity if panel content is notreceived by the due date or is notapproved by the due deadline.

UK Mapping Festival OrganisingCommittee, www.ukmf18.org

Historical Mapping


on the map. Five of her mapdrawings are now permanentlyhoused close to their ‘locations’,where they will continue tostimulate conversations.

Olivia has also developed arelationship with the planningdepartment of the county counciland is discussing possible names for

new features in the area based onall the information she has gathered.She is working on a printed map thatwill collate all the stories, which shewill give to residents of the newhouses as they are built, with theintention that they will feel moreconnected to where they live.

Through Traces of Place, Olivia

has started conversationsbetween residents, prompteddiscussions within the council andrecorded and shared a widerange of local memories andstories, all of which will have avaluable and lasting impact onthe area and its residents.

By Bonnie Craig, ResearchAssociate, In Certain Places,University of Central Lancashire

Jellied Map


UK Mapping Festival 2018

In Certain Places explores howcultural place-making shapes thefortunes of our cities and regions.By sustaining a flow of trans-disciplinary artistic interventions,it encourages artist-led andcommunity-focused networks ofpractice to develop projectswhich reveal and engage with‘places’. http://incertainplaces.org

Traces of Place:tracesofplace.blogspot.co.uk

In October 2017 we travelled with22 colleagues on a Staff Ridethrough France. A “Staff Ride” is

a formal battlefield tour in which allparticipate in research and givelectures to their fellow participants,which we did in pairs (two talks inEngland, eight in France). ThisStaff Ride was devoted to theactivities of the Special OperationsExecutive (SOE) in France duringWWII. SOE was set up by Churchillfollowing the fall of France to “setEurope ablaze” i.e. carry outsabotage and subversion and fosterresistance to the Nazi occupier.SOE’s F Section was responsiblefor inserting and running agents inFrance. Many of the agents whocarried out this dangerous workwere female, such as OdetteSansom, Noor Inayat Khan andViolette Szabo (all of whomreceived the GC). Many, both maleand female, lost their lives at thehands of the Nazis (including Khanand Szabo). Our guide on the StaffRide was Col. Nick Fox, Retired.

Starting from RAF Wyton nearHuntingdon on Monday morning,our first stop was the former RAFTempsford in Bedfordshire. RAFTempsford is sometimes describedas a “secret” WWII airfield. Theairfield was not very secret – it isclearly visible in wartime airphotography – but its purpose was.This was one of the airfields (theother was Tangmere, near BognorRegis) from which SOE agentswould take off on their missions to

the Continent. Like so many smallwartime airfields in Britain, it is nolonger in use, but a small privatemuseum has been set up with SOEmemorabilia which can be visited byprior appointment. We were shownround by Lady Isabelle, Countess ofErroll. Then the short drive toGibraltar Barn, where SOE agentswere given their final equipment andbriefings before flying off.

There followed the first of manylong drives, this one of 140 milesto the New Forest and Beaulieu,whose name gives away its originsfrom across the Channel seven

hundred years ago. Beaulieu (seatof the Barons Montagu) was one ofmany stately homes requisitionedfor the war effort. It was the mainSOE training school and there is asmall museum devoted to SOEwithin the grounds. It is beyond theNational Motor Museum and isreached by a monorail. In thegrounds of the ruined abbey is aplaque to SOE, unveiled in 1969 by

Maj.-Gen. Sir Colin Gubbins, Headof SOE 1943-46.

This was the day (16 October) thatStorm Ophelia hit the British Isles,resulting in three deaths in Ireland.The local manifestation of this,apart from a warm wind, includedthe strange orange sun and yellowskies caused by Saharan dust.The thought of an overnightChannel crossing in a hurricanewas not inviting as we drove intoPortsmouth at sunset. The ferrywas not due to depart for fourhours, so we had time to walk tothe waterfront at the Square Tower

and the Round Tower, paying ourrespects to Lord Nelson’s statue (afamous landmark which wasrelocated by the Council in 2005 toconfuse tourists and ghosts) andhaving a good look at the choppywaters, which nevertheless did notseem too rough.

The car ferry left at 11pm. In theevent, the six hour voyage was nottoo uncomfortable, with a littlerolling. By chance, we followed thehundred nautical mile route of manyOperation Overlord ships, butarrived peaceably at Ouistreham onthe Norman coast before sunrise.But this was not a D-Day Staff Rideand we drove non-stop south toArgentan for breakfast and a talk(no. 3) by the town’s war memorial.

Followed by 150km south toChâteau-du-Loir for a briefing on

Fair stood the wind for France…We few, we happy few

Fabric map andGeorge Fieldingobituary insideSOE Museum

Beaulieu Hants

Photos &poppies etcinside SOE barnat at GibraltarFarm RAFTempsford Beds

produces maps of everyconceivable scale, for everyconceivable purpose and in everyconceivable format. John hadbrought a selection of IGN mapsincluding the regional map, thedepartmental map, some SeriesOrange (1:50,000) and someSeries Blue (1:25,000). But, alas,Chateauroux is too small to merita IGN town plan. Luckily, Johnhad also brought his trustyMichelin Guide with him –published in 1939. The invadingWehrmacht found it invaluable in1940, not least in showing thelocation of petrol stations wherethe German tanks could berefuelled during their race acrossFrance. It was also invaluable toSOE agents operating in wartimeFrance. It devotes 2 pagesincluding a map to Chateauroux.It shows that in 1939 the HotelFrance occupied the sameaddress as our modern hotel.After dinner we went in search ofthe oddly named “Au Chat quiFume (Jayez)” restaurant in theRue Grande, recommended in1939. The building is stillrecognisable but the non-PCname has been changed.

On Thursday we packed for thelong drive north and said au revoirto Chateauroux. We stopped firstat Valençay to see the Memorialto all the dead of F Section whichwas erected by the FrenchRepublic in 1991 in the middle ofa roundabout and 46 years afterthe end of the war, but better thannothing and better late thannever. Another briefing here (no.8), and Col. Nick led a shortwreath-laying ceremony. Wedrove on minor roads acrosscountry to the village of Dhuizon.

Col. Nick spoke here, but no oneelse. Nicholas walked round thepleasant village, which includedan impressive church, a phonebox tuned into a library, abutcher’s whose windows weredecorated with beautiful paintingsof pre-slaughtered deer andrabbits, and the pretty gardens ofthe local town hall.

To another landing zone at BoisPerrier for briefing no. 9 thenfinally westwards to Blois. Theoccupied zone (non-Vichy) ofFrance was covered at scale1:50,000 by Series GSGS 4250.Blois is on sheet 9J/1, alsonumbered 108NW. The mapshows numerous railway lines thatno longer exist, including one thatcrossed the Loire just upstream ofBlois. The railway bridge wasdestroyed by Allied bombing in1944 and was never rebuilt. Thescanty remains of some supportsare still visible in the wide river.

In Blois we visited the Museum ofResistance, Deportation andLiberation. Our guide was MichelDuru, a surviving member of theResistance, presumably at least90 but fit and alert. The museumis well stocked, with exhibitsincluding British silk maps, Stenguns, a 1.8 metre long canisterused by SOE for droppingequipment, and examples of sandfrom the Utah, Omaha and Junobeaches of Normandy. Thetextures and colours of thesethree are obviously different.

The final briefing (no. 10) wasgiven by the two of us by thegreat door of Blois cathedral,talking about how SOE waswound up, what happened tosurviving SOE agents in later life(a very large number lived to agreat age), and how the activitiesof SOE have been portrayedsince WWII in the UK and Francethrough books, films and TVprogrammes of varying degrees ofaccuracy. Nicholas whipped awartime silk map of France andnorthern Spain out of his pocketto demonstrate how silent andcompact they were. We had just afew minutes to walk round Blois,but it was nearly 5 o’clock and wewere still 200 miles fromOuistreham, so back in the vansfor the drive north. We didn’t havetime for the planned dinner inAlençon so could not field checkour War Office 1:7,500 town plandated April 1944 from SeriesGSGS 4234, which covered thetowns of northern France, not asfar south as Blois or Châteauroux.

We reached Ouistreham in rain(up till then the week had beenunseasonably warm and sunny),but with a calmer crossing back toPortsmouth than the outboundvoyage. The day after we returnedfrom this most fascinating andthought-provoking 727km tour ofFrance, we read of the death ofYvonne Burney, one of the lastsurviving SOE F Section agents.We salute her and all who servedwith F Section SOE.

By Mr Nicholas Hutchings andDr John Peaty

Historical Mapping


the establishment of agentnetworks in France, held by thewar memorial, which is next to thescanty but picturesque flower-bedecked remains of theotherwise vanished chateau, afew kilometres from the Loir (notthe more famous Loire).

We then travelled 80 kilometressouth to a field near Azay, nearTours. The field was a typicallanding place for the Lysanderswhich flew from Tempsford orTangmere. There’s not a lot to see(it is a field, basically, like Crécy orAgincourt) but Col. Nick had aknack for creating atmosphere andbringing these places alive with adescription of the “Prosper”network of agents, which wasbetrayed to the Germans by acollaborator. Apart from thedangers, it must have been anavigational challenge to find fromthe cockpit of a Lysander, inmoonlight, one particular field,even in this distinctive locationbetween the two big rivers, amongall the other “vasty fields ofFrance”. The last planned “stand”of the day was abandoned, as oneof our vans broke down. Thiswould have been the drop zone forGeorges Bégué, the first FrenchSOE agent dropped by parachuteon 6 May 1941.

The final drive of the day took ussouth again along the typically deadstraight tree-lined roads of France(most of which follow routes laiddown by the Romans). We stayedtwo nights in a simple hotel inChâteauroux in central France.

On Wednesday we walked theshort distance to the house wherethe first SOE agent to be dropped

in France (at the spot we had notseen the previous afternoon) madethe first known radio messageback to England in May 1941.

Then we travelled non-stop 150kmfurther south to Oradour north-westof Limoges. On 9 June 1944 theWaffen SS “Das Reich” PanzerDivision was heading north forNormandy. A major(Sturmbannführer) was captured bythe French Resistance and takento Oradour. This was Oradour-sur-Vayres, a small village on a smalltributary of the Charente. Inretaliation, the SS burnt, shot orotherwise massacred 642inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane, adifferent village on a small tributaryof the Vienne 26km to the north-east. Much of the village was alsodestroyed. This area near Limogeswas too far south to be mapped indetail by the British: the SS tooperhaps had only the contemporaryFrench map no. 154 at scale1:80,000 on which the “sur-Glane”element is in small print and notobvious on a black and whiteproduct obscured by hachures (thepresence of hachures and absenceof contours on the 1:80,000 Serieswas perplexing to friend and foealike in both World Wars).

The other Oradour is on theadjacent sheet. This must be one ofthe most extreme cases of theunintended consequences ofmistaking a toponym. After thewar’s end, the ruined village waspreserved as a memorial, while anew village and a museum werebuilt nearby. We explored the ruinsincluding the church where mosthad died, a pilgrimage bestcompleted alone and in silence. Wecould “Remember” first seeing

Oradour at the very beginning andthe poignant end of “The World atWar” TV series in 1973, narrated byLaurence Olivier. In the museumwe learnt what Olivier had not toldus: at their post-war trial many ofthe surviving perpetrators turnedout to be French, from Alsace, andthey argued that they had beencoerced into German service. Allperpetrators were released fromprison in the 50s, to local dismay.

On the way back north toChâteauroux, we stopped to visitthe monument where PearlWitherington (codenamed Marie,later Pauline) parachuted intoFrance in September 1943. Bygood luck Nicholas had boughther autobiography in an Oxfambookshop a few days earlier.

Though capital of the Indredepartment, Chateuaroux is amodest town of under 50,000. It isnot on the tourist trail, a town plandoes not seem to be commerciallyavailable in Britain and it does notappear in most guide books.However, it has some attractiveold streets and the lovelyeponymous Château Raoul towersabove the Indre river.

France is one of the best mappedcountries in the world. IGN, thenational mapping agency,

Historical Mapping


Parachute canister in ResistanceMuseum in Blois, France

War memorial inChateau-du-Loir,France

SOE memorial near Valencay,France

German guide toOccupied Francein ResistanceMuseum in Blois,France

electronic products that havebeen submitted over the years.Although the Bodleian is a legaldeposit Library, many of the mapsare new additions to the overallcollection. If there are duplicatesthey will go into the main Librarycollection if a copy is not heldalready. If the Library has a copythen the duplicates are offered toother libraries. The BCS and ICAcollections are held in separatemap chests in the BSF, theBodleian’s Book Storage Facilityat Swindon. We are still waitingfor and working on the 2017entries but already some previousBCS entries have been exhibitedin Convocation House, part of theBodleian, for the benefit of theCambridge Conference attendeeslast July.

By Peter Jolly

Footnote: Peter Jolly is being waytoo modest – he and hiscolleague Peter Hawksworth, both

former RAF navigators – havebeen volunteering in the MapRoom, and their presence andcartographic expertise has freedup time for the Library toundertake this challenging project.

We hope to have records loadedonto the Bodleian’s onlinecatalogue, SOLO, by the end ofthis year.

Nick Millea

BCS & ICA Awards


You may have wonderedwhat has happened to theentries submitted annually

for BCS Awards and bi-annuallyfor ICA Awards. Well, untilrecently they have been held in avariety of locations betweenLondon and Edinburgh and, as faras I can tell, have not beencatalogued in any sort ofsystematic manner andconsequently have not beenreadily available to would-beenthusiasts for further study ordisplay.

Now, all the entries that we areaware of have been delivered tothe Map Room in the BodleianLibrary. We have received mapsgoing back as far as 1999 but thebulk of the maps are from 2005 tothe 2017 entries. However, if youknow where others reside thenplease do get in touch. Theentries arrived rolled-up incardboard tubes or in boxes, thelatter contained folded maps,atlases, small books, CDs andsome paperwork. The most

important piece of paperwork isthe applicant’s entry form whichdetails not only the applicant, theaward category: Stanfords, JohnC. Bartholomew, Avenza, OSOpen Data, New Mapmaker etc.,but also the purpose of the mapand the production technique -both aspects are most importantfor the archive.

From the Bodleian Map Roomperspective there are standardelements of a ‘map’ that have tobe recorded and so acomprehensive spreadsheet isused to describe all the entries.Each entry where the informationis available, includes the ISBN,map title, cartographer(s), scale,production company, location,date of data used, date ofproduction, what it is: an atlas,map, book, CD, etc., colouryes/no, submitted by, for whichaward, area covered, BCS entrynumber and shelfmark.

So, it should be fairly simple,mapping material on one side and

spreadsheet on the other, but notreally! The lack of entry lists forthe earlier years was an issue asall we had was the list of winnerstaken from the old BCS website.Then the maps that had beenrolled up for years were reluctantto come out of their comfy tubesand be flattened. Fortunately,there are some fairly heavy metalbars in the Map Room to whichthey succumbed. The maps aredifferent shapes and sizes andsome had velcro pieces on themhaving been on display at a BCSsymposium. This is why thosesubmitting entries are asked fortwo copies, one for display andthe other for archiving. I think toothat BCS inherited some extramaps that hadn’t been submittedfor the awards but were collectedup from the stands at the end ofthe symposium and includedamongst the material.

All that said it’s been good funand worthwhile. What has beenso impressive is the high qualityand variety of maps, atlases and

BCS & ICA Awards


The BCS are looking for a convener to support their popular GIS Special Interest Group (SIG).

This SIG is a research-based group providing a point of contact and discussion for those engaged in any aspect of Geographical Information Systems and associated sciences.

The aim of the SIG is to: • Promote activities and events such as seminars, workshops, visits and open meetings during the Annual Symposium • Encourage participants in its meetings to publish their ideas and findings in the outlets provided by the Society • Seek to publish an occasional newsletter, distributed free to members of the BCS and on subscription to others.

This is a great opportunity to become part of the wider BCS community and actively help with theSociety’s goals and programme.

If you are interested, please email Paul Naylor (BCS Programme Chair) at [email protected]

This SIG is a research-based group providing a poin

The BCS are looking for a convener to support their

This SIG is a research-based group providing a poin

The BCS are looking for a convener to support their

t of contact and discussion for those engaged in This SIG is a research-based group providing a poin

popular GIS Special Interest Group (SIG).The BCS are looking for a convener to support their

t of contact and discussion for those engaged in

popular GIS Special Interest Group (SIG).


popular GIS Special Interest Group (SIG).

Seek to publish an occasional newsletter • provided by the SocietyEncourage participants in its meetings to pub • Annual SymposiumPromote activities and events such as semina •

The aim of the SIG is to:

any aspect of Geographical Information Systems anThis SIG is a research-based group providing a poin

Seek to publish an occasional newsletterprovided by the SocietyEncourage participants in its meetings to pubAnnual SymposiumPromote activities and events such as semina

The aim of the SIG is to:

any aspect of Geographical Information Systems anThis SIG is a research-based group providing a poin

, distributed free to members of the BCS and onSeek to publish an occasional newsletter

lish their ideas and findings in the outletsEncourage participants in its meetings to pub

rs, workshops, visits and open meetings during the Promote activities and events such as semina

d associated sciences.any aspect of Geographical Information Systems ant of contact and discussion for those engaged in This SIG is a research-based group providing a poin

, distributed free to members of the BCS and on

lish their ideas and findings in the outlets

rs, workshops, visits and open meetings during the

d associated sciences.t of contact and discussion for those engaged in

, distributed free to members of the BCS and on

lish their ideas and findings in the outlets

rs, workshops, visits and open meetings during the


If you are interested, please email Paul Naylor (BCS

s goals and programme.Society’This is a great opportunity to become part of the wid

subscription to others.

If you are interested, please email Paul Naylor (BCS

s goals and programme.This is a great opportunity to become part of the wid

subscription to others.

Programme Chair) at [email protected] you are interested, please email Paul Naylor (BCS

er BCS community and actively help with theThis is a great opportunity to become part of the wid

Programme Chair) at [email protected]

er BCS community and actively help with the

Programme Chair) at [email protected]

er BCS community and actively help with the

The Fate of YourEntries for BCSand ICA Awards

Painted Map


Loving Vincent, the first fullypainted feature film, recentlywas nominated for an Oscar

for best animated feature, exposingthe life and works of Vincent vanGogh to audiences afresh.

Artist and map-maker JaneTomlinson has loved Vincent since1979 when on a school trip to theNational Gallery, “…the yellow ofThe Sunflowers hit me rightbetween the eyes!” she says. “Fromthat dazzling moment, I needed todiscover more about what drovehim, and see what he saw.

Last autumn Jane finally dared tobegin what had been haunting hersince she started painting maps eightyears ago – a map of van Gogh’s lifeand works. The map, hand paintedon a sheet of A1 in watercolour andink, shows where he lived and when,and what he painted when he was(roughly) in that location.

The Study of a Lifetime

The map combines 47 of van Gogh’smasterpieces - many of his best-loved works and some lesser-known- that chart Vincent’s extraordinarilywide range of interests: boats, trees,flowers, people, architecture, trees,even the stars.

“The actual drawing andputting down of paint took only

about six weekends,” says Jane,“but really it’s taken 38 years ofresearch and thousands of miles oftravel. Vincent was an avid letter-writer and reveals his innermostthoughts, and so it was vital toinclude quotes in the painting.”Jane painstakingly copied them inVincent’s handwriting.

Making the Map

Jane works by hand, using paper,pencils, paint and brushes. “The onlything I use the computer for is pictureresearch – it’s quicker than leafingthrough all my books” she explains.“Planning is everything because onceI’ve started putting paint and inkdown there is no going back. I beganby drawing out the outline of the landin pencil, and marking the position oftowns, names of countries,international boundaries, and notingwhere I wanted the quotes to appear.

“Using a long list of all the mainmotifs I wanted to show, for examplesunflowers, boats, etc, I noted them

in pencil their approximate positionon the sheet. I wanted sunflowers atthe epicentre of the painting. It’spretty messy at this stage. I have tothink about how each element willmorph into the next, and how theoverall colour balance will work –

with Vincent there was always goingto be a lot of blue and yellow and Ididn’t want them to be bang slapnext to each other.”

“And at some point, I can’t takefiddling around in pencil anymore,and I just have to get the paintout. It’s pretty scary putting thefirst colour down, but a massiverelief to finally be painting.Colouring-in is the best bit!”

“France and the Netherlands wereeasy and I began with those, but forages I couldn’t decide what to dowith Belgium and England. Englandwas especially tricky as Vincentwas not an artist when he livedhere. In the end I chose booksbecause he was a vicarious reader,and religious figure because hewas a trainee preacher in London.

“At some point, maybe 15% of theway into the painting, it takes on alife of its own. This happens with allmy paintings, and long ago I learnedI must follow where it takes me. Itoften means rethinking quite largesections. For example, the liftingbridge that ended up in roughly thecentre of France started in theplanning stage much further east.”

The painting was not a commission,it was done entirely in Jane’s ‘so-called spare time’, for her ownamusement. “All this time I havestudied his works and I still ‘discover’paintings and drawings I’ve neverseen before. There’s still so muchmore to learn, and making this maptaught me just a little bit more.”

Signed prints of Jane’s Map ofVincent are available at:http://janetomlinson.com/artworks/life-and-works-of-vincent-van-gogh

Painted Map


Loving a Map ofVincent van Gogh

Working stages of the finished map

“You can’t be at the pole and the equator at the sametime. You must choose your own line, as I hope to do,and it will probably be colour” wrote Vincent van Gogh

to his brother Theo in April 1888.

Sands of Morar to Sanna andthe Singing Sands further south

Eye-popping Islands

Thousands of them! From the bigislands with people living on themto the tiny ones mainly covered inbird poo, Britain is an islomaniac’sfantasy.

Shetland: Half way to•Scandinavia, including remoteHermaness and its views toMuckle Flugga lighthouse andOut Stack, Britain’snorthernmost pointInland islands like Inchmurrin•(the largest in Britain) andInchconnachan (with its ownwallaby population), both onLoch LomondBardsey Island: A wild and holy•place off the tip of the Lleynpeninsula, north WalesArran: A self-contained•miniature Scotland

World-beating Waterways

Besides messing about in boats,there is so much you can do on,in and near the rivers, lakes,canals and other watery wondersof Britain.

The Great Glen: Four•connected lakes running 62miles coast-to-coast fromInverness to Banavie - one ofthe great journeysThe Broads: Perfect for•pootling, 120 miles of shallowlakes / rivers in a serenely flatlandscapeThe Thames: Canoe it or walk it•from the Cotswolds to the NorthSea

The River Wye: Beautiful•scenery for a gentle paddle

Legendarily Good Long-distance Routes

Britain is blessed with some firstclass long-distance routes.Whether you’re travelling by foot,bike, car, public transport or somecontraption you’ve been tinkeringaway at in your shed for years,these routes do a mighty fine jobof showcasing Britain’s mostspectacular scenery.

Cycling or driving from the•furthest south to the furthestnorth: Isles of Scilly - Shetland National Trails / Great Trails like•the South West Coast Path,Wainwright’s Coast-to-Coast routeand the epic Cape Wrath TrailLôn Las Cymru: cycle the•length of Wales from Angleseyto CardiffHebridean Way: 185 miles of•peaceful cycling or drivingthrough the spectacular OuterHebrides

... And some otherRandom Stuff

A great British adventure isn’t justabout the landscape. There’s somuch else going on: the people,the history, the rapid change inaccent, language and culture asyou move through the country isremarkable by almost anyinternational comparison. Andthen there’s the random sideshowthat lets you know you could onlybe in Britain:

Excitingly eccentric events, such•as the Bognor Birdman, cheese

rolling in Gloucestershire, bogsnorkelling in mid-Wales,flaming Tar Barrels in Devon,Dorset Knob throwing, andcenturies-old street footballmatches involving hundreds ofpeople in the Midlands.Supremely random world•records, such as the biggesthedge on earth, MeikleourBeech Hedge, Perth andKinross (30m high, 530m long),and the world’s smallest pub,The Signal Box Inn,Cleethorpes (64 square foot).The world’s best funny place•names, like The Devil’s Arse (acave in the Peak District,named for the flatulent noises itemits), Lord Hereford’s Knob (aprominent hill in the BreconBeacons), the village of Dull(Perthshire), and lots of placescalled ‘Bottom’, like GallopingBottom (Somerset). This topicis, of course, a whole other canof presidential hairspray, butwe’re about to run out of page...

So, with a nod to Bill, perhapsBritain isn’t merely “the best place inthe world to stand on a hillside andtake in a view”. Maybe it’s the bestplace in the world for an adventure,full stop. Maybe. Let’s leave it therebefore any fights break out.

ST&G’s Joyously Busy GreatBritish Adventure Map shows offall Britain’s best bits on a singlesheet of paper - thousands ofgreat wild places, mountains,islands, beaches, waterways,views, long-distance routes,points of interest, eccentric eventsand a whole raft of entertaining,

Marvellous Maps


Rant alert! It’s odd, isn’t it?Britain is consistently oneof the most visited places

on Earth[1], its constituent partsfrequently do well in polls to namethe world’s most beautifulcountry[2], and there are plenty ofquotes from notable well-travelledfolks saying Britain is prettybloody gorgeous. For Bill Bryson,for example, Britain is “the bestplace in the world to stand on ahillside and take in a view”[3].

And yet, there are many reasons -young people getting outside less[4],our preference for holidaying abroadbefore we’ve seen the best of ourown country [5, 6], broader trendslike our startling performance in theworld obesity league[7] - to suggestwe need to get off our backsidesand into the Great British outdoors awhole lot more.

With that befuddling state ofaffairs in mind, here’s a whistle-stop tour of Britain and itscredentials as an adventureplayground of the highest order.(Spoiler: it’s a tiny bit biased).

Wondrously Wild Places

Britain has 15 national parks and

80 odd second-tier “reallybeautiful places” (AONBs andNSAs), and more nature reserves,geoparks and acronyms than akeen bureaucrat could wave alarge clipboard at. But that’s onlypart of the story. Ours may be asmall, crowded island but it hassome superlative slices ofwilderness, such as:

The northern part of Wester•Ross, Highlands: Scotland’s“last great wilderness”Knoydart, Highlands: accessible•only by ferry or a 16 mile hikeDartmoor: wild, lonely•Baskerville country, and abronze-age treasure chest Fair Isle, Shetland: Britain’s•most remote populated island

Magnificent Mountains & Hills

There are 302 mountains inBritain over the height of 3,000ft,almost all of them in Scotland, ofcourse (Munros). We Brits oftenuse feet when talking about ourmountains and hills to make themseem bigger, but don’t be fooled -they are spectacular. And (bonus)you don’t need supplementaloxygen to get to the top.

Glen Coe, Highlands: Iconic•Buachaille Etive Mor and the

Three Sisters North West Highlands: Suilven•(the finest of them all?) and theFisherfield Five (the mostremote Munros)Snowdonia: Cadair Idris (don’t•go to sleep up there!), Tryfanand its jagged ridgeline Lake District: Helvellyn•(recently voted Britain’sfavourite walk[8]), andEngland’s highest, Scafell Pike

Classy Coastline &Unbelievable Beaches

Suspend your disbelief: Britainpossesses a huge number ofbrilliant beaches, including theone that was mistakenly used toadvertise a Thai beach resort in2009*.

The Outer Hebrides: White•sand and azure seas - Scarista,Luskentyre and the islands ofBerneray*, Barra and VatersayThe Gower Peninsula: Classy•coastline at Rhossili,Llangennith, Three Cliffs BayThe Scilly Isles: Heaven on•sand - pretty much everywhereyou look is beachMorar, Moidart &•Ardnamurchan: From the much-filmed Camusdarach and Silver

Marvellous Maps


Great Britain: The Great UnsungAdventure Playground?

A foolish attempt to do justice to Britain’s world-classadventure playground status in a few short paragraphs

With their distinctive longflippers and exuberantbreaching behaviour,

humpback whales (Megapteranovaeangliae) are one of the mosteasily recognised and best knownof the large whales. People travelthe world to catch a glimpse ofthese charismatic megafauna, butwhat if I told you that you couldsee humpbacks within walkingdistance of a UK railway station?

A highly migratory species,humpbacks spend most of the yearin the productive seas of higherlatitudes before migrating to warmerbreeding grounds in winter. One ofthe Pacific migrations features inthe John C. Bartholomew award-winning “Where the Animals Go” byJames Cheshire & Oliver Uberti.

In the north-east Atlantic,Humpback whales have beenseen off the Scottish islandsduring their autumn migration asthey head from the Barents Seato the Caribbean. For the last twoyears however, humpback whaleshave been regularly encounteredon the eastern coast of Scotland,arriving off the Aberdeenshirecoast in September and the Firthof Forth by January.

Making the map

The Forth Marine Mammal Project,

a Facebook group of marinespotters, regularly report sightingsof seals, porpoises, dolphins, andthe occasional whale from bothsides of the Forth. The group is afantastic resource for sharingsightings, but personalisedreference points like “buoy no. 7”,“white building”, “three spires”, andthe similar names of the Forthislands (Inchcolm, Inchmickery,Inchkeith) was causing confusion.It was clear the group needed areference map. Hydrographiccharts were felt to show too muchinformation for land-basedobservers, so I offered to make acustom map.

I’d missed the humpbacks in 2017, sothis year I took every opportunity tojump on the train between the mainviewpoints at Kinghorn, Burntislandand Aberdour. That allowed me toidentify key features for a mapthrough my own experience andspeaking with fellow spotters.

The whales were generally movingin the deeper shipping lane, so Idigitised the numbered lane buoysfrom OpenSeaMap. In real-life, thebuoys aren’t colour-blind friendlybeing red (port) and green(starboard), but I used differentsymbols as well as colour toimprove accessibility.

For viewpoints and reference points

like Edinburgh castle, I made adesign decision not to use a legend,instead using labels and commonsymbols including some fromOrdnance Survey’s GeoDataViztoolkit. I opted for Carto’s Positronas a muted basemap to make thesymbols stand out.

To promote responsible whalewatching, I marked nearby railwaystations to encourage travel by publictransport, and made the decision notto show viewpoints which had limitedparking to avoid congestion and notto upset residents.

After testing early versions, I alsobroke with tradition and made asouth orientated map for peopleviewing from the Fife (north) side.

Impacts of the map

The map was very well receivedand provided a common languageto share sightings. We could lookat the map, either printed or on ourphones, and know “white building”was the Chancelot Mill or “threespires” was St Mary’s Cathedral.

A local newspaper published themap along with the photos of awhale breaching with Edinburghcastle in the background, which inturn was picked up by nationalnewspapers.

There was real excitement aboutthese urban whales and theFacebook group grew from 300 to1,600 members in a few days,with people travelling from aroundthe UK to see them. But nature isa fickle beast and just as interestpeaked, the whales disappeared.

As I write, the whales haven’tbeen seen for a week, but we’llcontinue to watch the sea, hopingfor them to return in 2019.

By Liam Mason,Liam provides spatial analysisand data visualisation for MarineScotland, a directorate of theScottish Government. In his sparetime, Liam is an instructor withKirkcaldy & district sub aqua cluband a marine mammal medic forBritish Divers Marine Life Rescue.

Whale Spotting


Hello all, my name isJennifer Johnston and I’mthe new Restless Earth

Coordinator! I’d like to send a bigthank you to Alice for helping meget up to speed and for thecontinued support.

I have just relocated to the UK fromToronto, Canada. My background isin Geography, Fine Arts, GIS, andCartography. I’ve been working as acartographer for the past 9 years. Istarted with the Atlas of Canadamaking maps upon request fordifferent departments. I then movedup the Alaskan Highway makingwall maps for a land surveyingcompany, and then across thePacific Ocean to Australia to workfor Explore Australia and LonelyPlanet. While I was in Australia Iwas awarded the opportunity to goto India and train their new GISteam in cartographic designprinciples.

I’m excited to be in the UK nowwith the Restless Earthworkshops. They are an excitingand practical way of getting a newgeneration interested incartography and maps. Several ofmy friends and colleagues havebeen asking if there is a similar

program available in Canada fortheir children to participate in.Unfortunately I am not aware ofanything comparable on offer.

Using the real-life example of theJapanese earthquake, tsunamiand nuclear disaster of 2011,there is still relevance, as thereseems to be an increasingnumber of multiple disastershappening at once and theireffects are felt for many yearslater. It works well in theclassroom with the Japanese textbeing illegible to the students andforcing them to rely on thesymbology of the map tounderstand a landscape that isunfamiliar to them.

If you know of any schools in theUK who would be interested inhaving this workshop for theiryear 10 and 11 students they canfind more information on the BCSwebsite www.cartography.org.uk/members/education-schools/welcome-to-the-bcs-restless-earth-workshop/ or theycan email me [email protected]

We currently have 2 datesbooked. One is on 28 June 2018

in the greater Birmingham areaand the other is on 15 October2018 in Dartford. There are plentymore dates in the works so pleaseif you would like to volunteer andparticipate at a workshop nearyou contact me by [email protected]

If you chose to volunteer the timecan be taken off work as avoluntary day or part of yourCorporate Social Responsibilityday. It is an opportunity to usethese days to promote cartographyand to instil an interest andmemorable experience in studentsaround the country. My hope isthat these workshops will promptstudents to consider a future incartography or mapping. I knowthat for myself I wish I had heardabout the cartography disciplinemuch sooner in life.

I look forward to meeting you allat the workshops. Participantemails will be sent to the emailaddresses we have on file to themembers within a 40 mile radiusof the workshop locations.

Please do respond or feel free topass the opportunity onto a friendif you can’t make it.

Looking forward to a great yearahead!

Marvellous Maps


Restless Earth Report 2018

inspiring and even vaguely usefulinformation. £14.99 frommarvellousmaps.com

By Humphrey Butler, founder ofStrumpshaw, Tincleton &Giggleswick’s Marvellous [email protected]

Strumpshaw, Tincleton &Giggleswick's Marvellous Maps ~marvellousmaps.com

ReferencesVisit Britain (www.visitbritain.org/visitor-economy-facts)12OK, mainly Scotland! Rough Guides, 4 September 2017 -2Scotland voted most beautiful country in the worldBill Bryson, Notes From A Small Island: Journey Through Britain3(Black Swan, 2015)The Times, 31 January 2018 - Screen-addicted children spend 164minutes a day outside Sunshine.co.uk, 26 September 2017 - British Babies Now Visit5Beaches Abroad Before UK ShoresIt’s nothing new: Over 300 years ago, adventurer Celia Fiennes6was encouraging people to get into the Great British outdoors, to“cure the evil Itch of overvaluing foreign parts”. From CeliaFiennes, Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time ofWilliam and Mary, Being the Diary of Celia Fiennes (Field andTuer, The Leadenhall Press, 1888). Available online here.NHS - Britain’s obesity crisis7ITV’s “Britain’s 100 Favourite Walks”, January 20188

ST&G's Joyously Busy Great British Adventure Map Unfolded Humpback Whalesoff the UK

the valley where the terrain iseven more rugged and the valleygradually narrows until it becametoo difficult for the cars toprogress. So we abandoned themand continued on foot. As thearea looked extremely interesting,we thought we’d split into groupsto explore the valley.

It only took a few minutes ofwalking into the valley before loudcheers and cries could be heard.Everyone was calling their friendsto come and see what they had

discovered. There were numerousThamudic drawings and it wasobvious we had found a largegarden of engravings, perhaps asold as 7,000 years, or even older.I was struck by the large numberand diversity of patterns in thevalley. Within a couple of hours Ihad seen more Thamudicengravings and drawings than I’veever seen in my life of searchingin the Kingdom.

Some were etched on horizontalsurfaces, others on vertical rocks

and there were engravings fromdifferent periods and generations.There are engravings of animals,people and tools prevalent duringthe various periods. I particularlyliked the drawings of the saddlesused for carrying goods on acamel's back and allocated for thewomen when inside the tent.There is even an engraving of awarrior carrying a spear andleading his camel.

We spent several hours in thisfine, rocky park taking manyphotos and sharing theexperience, with no words beingable to describe the splendor andbeauty of the place or theemotions it evoked.

By Jibal Al Masma & AbdullahA. Al Sayari

Ancient Drawings


Jibal Al Masma displays thepast through wonderfulancient rock drawings.

Abdullah A. Al Sayari outlines therewards of a recent trip.

In mid-March, I made my first tripin the footsteps of the old caravanroute between the cities of Hailand Tema with a group of friends.The trip, over six days, retracedthe steps of a route that hasattracted travelers for hundreds ofyears, and more latterly,orientalists who visit the ArabianPeninsula to study the earlycivilisations that lived and tradedthere.

It is impossible for anyone whovisits these areas not to go awaywith fond memories for this part ofthe Arabian Desert, and thedesire to have the opportunity toreturn again and again. Thescenery is breathtaking and theexperiences along the way stretchthe imagination and force you tocarry them after you have left.

We started our journey on theRiyadh to Hail road in the earlymorning as we needed to reachthe city of Hail around noon. Here,we took a break and had lunchbefore setting off for our nextdestination, Jabal Habran, whichlies to the north-west of Hail,around 160km on a paved road.

We left Hail on the road to Medinaand after about 38km turned to thenorth onto the road to Taima. Aftersome 46km on this road, we turnedagain, this time towards JabalHabran, for a further 80km, whichwe managed to reach before sunset.We chose a nice site off the road toerect our camp and spent the nightin the arms of the Habran Mountain.

The next morning after a leisurelybreakfast, we set off for a nearbymountain called FurdhatAs’Shamoos, which lies to thesouth-west of Jabal Habran,around 30km away. It standsalone from the rest of themountains and in between the

terrain is rugged road, alternatingbetween sand and rocks and wehad to spend more than an hourcovering the short distance.

We stopped every now and then tosearch the folds of the mountainand at every likely spot that seemedas if it may have offered shelter,and we were rewarded when wefound Thamudic engravings of agroup of beautiful horses that wereobviously domesticated. Theengravings were located on asmooth rock face some fifteenmetres from the base. We took ashort break next to the engravingsto take photographs and explore thearea for more of these rockdrawings by the people who lived inthis place in ancient times.

Afterwards, we set off to the westtowards Jabal Al Masma, a rangeof mountains stretching from northto south over approximately 50km.When seen from a distance, themountains seem to block the roadto An Nafud Al Kabir. However, tothe east of the range there aremany valleys through which youcan pass and when we reachedthe foot we crossed through avalley called Wadi Ghadab. As weprogressed into the valley goingwestwards, towards the centre ofthe mountains, the valley narrowsand the terrain becomesincreasingly rugged. We came to,and had to pass through, a hugerocky arch formed by erosion,which is named Ghar Ghadab. Tothe east of this formation there isa smooth black stone wall, whichis filled with beautiful Thamudicengravings of a herd of camelsetched in all different sizes.

Beyond the stone arch, wecontinued toward the source of

Ancient Drawings


Voyager TipAbdullah A. Al Sayari runsDesert Maps in Riyadh’sIndustrial City 2. After nearly adecade of mapping, he has anextensive catalogue of mapscovering the Kingdom. For moreinformation contact DesertMaps at www.desertmaps.com

Journey to the Past

The Ghar Ghadab - a huge rocky arch formed by erosion.

Wadi Ghadab inscriptions

in two walks on Sunday 19November in Jedburgh, organisedthrough W.A.L.K from the Universityof Sunderland5, in collaboration withlong term collaborator naturalistKeith Bowey. The walks raised thequestion as to whether ecologicalsystems might be ‘helped’, notharmed, by incoming flora andfauna and thus asks whetherconservationists might sometimes,unwittingly, promote a set of ideasthat are tantamount to ‘greenxenophobia’? Bowey and Collierargued that borders visualised onmaps are political and socialconstructs made substantial on theground, and in our heads. Althoughborders may indeed sometimes bereal in geographical terms, asphysical barriers (mountain rangesor river valley systems for example),in ecological terms, the line on amap matters not to a nesting birdwho chooses a habitat that willsupport its survival, and is thus notdefined by geographical locality orhuman political identities, but bymortality. It was fitting then, that thefinal walk took in the town cemetery,where borders though present intemporal terms, are ephemeral.

The walk ended at the HuttonUnconformity, at Inchbonny, justoutside the town centre. JamesHutton sensed that the earth wasmany millions of years older thanpreviously thought and came torealise ‘That before the present landwas made, there had subsisted aworld composed of sea and land, inwhich were tides and currents, withsuch operations at the bottom of thesea as now take place’6. It is thismovement that artist Claire Pencakobserved in her chosen NLS mapby Ptolemy: ‘the vigorous way thesea is depicted suggesting adynamic inter-relationship betweenthe ocean and the land. You cansense the ebb and flow of the tide

and hear the sound of waves onrock’. Pencak explored this sense ofmovement in Entr’actes: AlternativeArrangements, a durationalperformance in collaboration withFelicity Bristow which took place atThe Bakery Studio in Jedburgh inthe ten hours from the dark beforedawn to the dark after dusk. Thisexperimental work, only glimpsed infractions by its audience, exploredaccumulation and dis-accumulation,erosion and deposition, change ofstate, reset and rearrangement andthe near, far and infinite throughmovement and materials to Hutton’sUnconformity.

Mapping the Borders thus drewtogether ten diverse interpretationsof the Anglo/Scottish border region,guided by historical maps toprovide context to a contemporaryinterpretation of change. Thetimeframes of geologicalmovement, the changingboundaries observed of non-humanspecies because of climate changeor the loss of human infrastructure,

and language… all allude tochange. The Borders’ expression;‘It’s aye bin’, which roughlytranslates as ‘it has thus ever been’may refer to fondness of traditionand the slow pace of change, butas both the historical maps and thecontemporary art works attest,change it ever was.

A short film about the exhibition canbe seen here:https://youtu.be/x9UfBqn2wvEA short film about the walk can beseen here:https://youtu.be/KngbPqoy3RoThe artists talks can be seen here:www.pechakucha.org/cities/galashiels/events/59f0e7c93c70ef911c0003dc

By Inge Panneels,Inge is an artist and academic. Forthe last decade, her research hasfocussed on the use of maps increative practices, including her ownpractice. She lectures at theNational Glass Centre at theUniversity of Sunderland where sheteaches place making and mappingpractices in a creative curriculum.She is also currently undertaking anAHRC funded PhD research projectat Northumbria University looking athow artists are charting change inthe Anthropocene in the New North.

Mapping the Borders


Mapping the Borders was aweek-long programme ofcultural events which

brought together contemporary artprojects with maps chosen by theartists from the National Library ofScotland (NLS). The map collectionwas thus used as a lens throughwhich to bring together diverseinterpretations of the Borders’culture. Mapping the Borders was apartnership between the Universityof Sunderland, the NLS and localpartners as part of the 2017nationwide Being Human Festival1.

Mapping the Borders broughttogether the work of ten artists,using different media to interrogatethe notion of ‘borders’ and inparticular the Anglo-Scottish border.It is a region defined by itsgeographical location, of rolling hillsand river valleys but steeped incontested history where traditionforms an important part of thecultural identity of its people. Theactuality of this border gainedparticular significance in the 2014Scottish Referendum debate, and itis no coincidence that severalworks in this show originated duringthis period. The two years leadingup to Referendum was a significanttime for a collective examination ofthe Scottish national identity, andby implication of the English natureof Britishness. The Brexitreferendum has arguably broughtthis cultural identity crisis to the foreonce more, but with broadergeographical and politicalramifications which will have longterm implications on the concept of’border’ in the whole of Britain, asthe current Irish border question isalready making manifest. It is withinthis broader political and culturalbackground that this project shouldbe considered.

An afternoon of Pecha Kuchatalks at MacArts in Galashiels onSaturday 18 November launched

the week-long Mapping theBorders2 event. The map curatorof the NLS and the artists gave asuccinct visual overview of thediverse maps and art practicespresented. The talks were framedby the Lawes of the Marches(2013) film by Katie Davies, whichexplored the common ridingtraditions of the Borders, boundingthe borders on horseback to thisday3. The talks launched theexhibition that brought togetherthe work of seven artists atCreative Coathanger in Venue 50in Galashiels. Artist John Wallaceused the Ecosystems ServicesModelling Framework as a guide,exploring human connections tothe ecosystems of the two border-marking rivers in his epiccinematic experience Tweed SarkCinema (2013).

Zoe Childerley walked the length ofthe Anglo-Scottish border andrecorded her encounters in TheDebatable Lands (2016), inphotographs and a hand drawnmap collated in a concertina bookwhich was stretched out in theexhibition like a meandering river.The Riverways (2013) map by KateFoster, devoid of any place namesor geographical data, observed thatthe catchment drawing ‘moves youfrom the predominant perception ofthe Scottish Borders as a series ofdiscrete small towns, towardsseeing it as a region connected bythe dense network of tributaries ofthe Tweed’. Similar in style to thehand-drawn map of Foster, if not inscale, was the Upper TeviotWatershed map (2017) by AlecFinlay and Gill Russell, displayedalongside the PhylogeneticDiagram of the Upper Teviot river,representing the flow of water,emphasising the arboreal nature of

rivers as a prompt to plant moretrees in upland areas to potentiallymitigate further flooding4.

Engineered flood protectionschemes are currently changing thetownscapes of Selkirk and Hawick.Change was also the theme of Ab-Sense (2013), an installation byInge Panneels of the four BorderAbbeys’ floorplans embedded inglass and placed on a looselydrawn meandering river, chalked onan old plan chest. Their prominencein the landscape, nestled along themain river networks, are visiblereminders of a turbulent past. Butperhaps more importantly, theiragricultural innovation changed theBorders landscape and land useforever. Clare Money’s Maplines(2017) also reflected on absence inher works, notably thedisappearance of the 98 mileWaverley Route between Carlisle,Hawick and Edinburgh in theBeeching cuts in the mid 20thcentury, which affected the ruralBorders town. This disappearanceis made visible by the erasure ofthe Riccarton Junction from the oldOS map and the altered colouringof the landscape, now cloaked inregulation pine.

Prof. Mike Collier’s work BoundariesAre Well Observed by CrossingThem (2013-18) was also explored

Mapping the Borders


Mapping the Borders:Charting Change

References1 The Being Human Festival aims to engage the public with research takingplace in the humanities, and is organised by the School of Advanced Study atUniversity London in partnership with AHRC and the British Academy anddelivered by HE institutions and their cultural partners across the UK:https://beinghumanfestival.org2 Pecha Kucha talks, is a format of twenty slides shown for twenty seconds eachwhich has been used worldwide to present in a succinct and visual manner. TheMapping the Borders talks can be found online at the Pecha Kucha website:www.pechakucha.org/cities/galashiels/events/59f0e7c93c70ef911c0003dc3 The Lawes of the Marches was produced during the Berwick Visual ArtsResidency for the 10th Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival and funded byArts Council England in 2014. You can see Lawes of the Marches film atKatie Davies’ website: www.katiedavies.com/lawes.html4 Finlay worked collaboratively with Gill Russell and Kate McAllan to map theUpper Teviot. You can read more about this project on Alec Finlay’s blog:http://alecfinlayblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/upper-teviot-notes-on-place-names.html5 W.A.L.K: Walking Artist Landskip Knowledge is a research centre based atthe University of Sunderland exploring how we might creatively engage withthe world as we walk through it: http://walk.uk.net6 James Hutton from an abstract of his dissertation Concerning the Systemof the Earth, its Duration and Stability, 1785 presented to the Royal Societyof Edinburgh. Reference made in notes made by Keith Bowey reflecting onthe walk of 19 November.

Exhibition shot showcasing ‘Border’ and‘Drawinglines’ by Clare Money.

Photograph by Kevin Greenfield, 2017

Walking the Line and CrossingBoundaries, two walks on 19November, Jedburgh. With MikeCollier (left) and Keith Bowey (centre).Image by Kevin Greenfield, 2017

At the recent ICA Executivemeeting in Zurich, wereceived the final report

from the International CartographicConference in Washington lastJuly. There was a total of 907 whoparticipated in the conference insome capacity, with 650 fullregistrations and 150 students.

The scientific programme, arrangedaround 40 themes, included 466oral presentations, 196 posters and6 panel discussions. Allpresentations were reviewed by 3members of the 80 sting ScientificCommittee. Only 8 submissionswere rejected outright, but abouthalf those accepted as posters weresubmitted for oral presentation. Inaddition to these presentations,many Commissions had businessmeeting and most were involved inone of the 12 one or two day pre-conference workshop.

The table of presentations bycountry makes interesting reading,and perhaps raises some concernsthe level of cartographic activity inthe UK. Presenters came from 59countries, an encouragingly widerange even if 18 countries only had1 presentation. Not surprisingly, theUS with over 100 presentations wasway out in front, but some of ourEuropean neighbours were wellrepresented with Switzerland at 34;Germany 28; and France 27. TheUK with only 9 is a reflection of ourcurrent state of academiccartography. In comparison, theCzech Republic at 15 presentationsand Poland with 12, many by youngacademics, reflect recentexpansions of academic cartographyin those countries. Surprisingly,there were only 10 Canadian and 3Mexican presentations given theirproximity to Washington, but a verysignificant 26 from Brazil which hashad a major resurgence ofcartographic research in recentyears at several universities.

Presentations are only one side ofthe conference and not totallyrepresentative of overall activitywithin ICA, but they are a useful

indicator of engagement withcartographic research. Of course,these figures need some caution ininterpretation. They reflect thedeclared nation of the lead authoror presenter of the paper. Many arejointly authored, and my joint paperwas delivered by my MalaysianPhD student, so is not included inthe UK figures, whereas onesuspects some PhD students willbe associated with their country ofstudy rather than their nationality.

The Cartographic Exhibitionincluded 479 maps andcartographic products from 36national and affiliate members ofICA. While there was an attempt bythe organisers to de-emphasiseprinted mapping, there were almost300 entries in this category, butonly 44 digital cartographicproducts. The challenge of howbest to showcase digital productsremains an issue, but it is clear thatprinted maps are still very much akey element of cartographic output.

One must congratulate theCartography and GeographicInformation Society (CaGIS) for anexcellent conference, but also forproducing such a clear andcomprehensive report in a timelymanner. It will be most helpful tofuture organisers or thoseconsidering bidding to host an ICC.

As mentioned, the ICA executiverecently met in Zurich, hosted bySara Fabricant at the University ofZurich. As usual the meeting wasvery intense, but we manged tocover everything on the agenda bythe end of day 2, prior to anexcellent dinner generously hostedby the Swiss Cartographic Society.Despite the time of year, theweather in Zurich was quite benign,with temperatures in the 7-9 degreerange and no sign of snow.

A new ICA Publication policyagreed at the previous meeting hasbeen developed and agreementreached with the hosting service.This is intended for outputs ofconferences and workshops. It hasa 3 tier structure. Advances in

Cartography and GI Science will befor fully refereed papers;Proceedings of the ICA will be forpapers based on refereedabstracts; and Abstracts of the ICAwill be for refereed abstracts. Thesewill all be open access publications,with the modest processing fee foreach entry included in conferenceregistration fees.

The current ICA Strategy is for theperiod until 2019, so half a daywas spent discussing an updatedstrategy for 2019-27. It’s early daysand this will likely be a major focusof the next couple of executivemeetings. More immediately, thePresident is very keen follow up onthe ICA posters about mapping tosupport the UN SustainableDevelopment Goals, with a bookon the same theme. If successful,this could be a significant way forcartography to reach governmentdecision makers and scientists inother disciplines, and show thatcartography can make a significantcontribution to understandingissues and tracking achievements.

The UK Cartography Committee willnext meet in June. A major item onthe agenda will be the UK NationalReport to ICA, to be submitted tothe General Assembly in July 2019.Our plans are to again publish thisas an issue of the CartographicJournal early next year, so requestswill be going out for contributionslater in the year. We also need tostart considering UK representationon Commissions. But following onfrom some of the figures presentedabove, we also need to think abouthow we can encourage more UKcartographers to engage in ICAactivities.

By David Forrest, ICA Vice-President and Chair of UKCC

UKCC


UKCC Report

ICA Executives, Zurich 2018

spring 2018 maplines update€¦ · visit the bcs website at spring 2018 / maplines • 3 welcome...

Documents