the first useful london map we found
Aug. 28th, 2014 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twoelevenone of the problems we had for the first couple of days in london is that the city is a maze of twisty streets, all random, connected by hyperspace bypasses. there are plenty of maps of hyperspace; in fact, the standard one is iconic. but none of those actually explain how to find the wormhole mouths, nor how they relate to each other in realspace. so we were, as daniel boone would say, "never lost, but a might bewildered for a couple of days".
fortunately, high on our to-do list was hitting the london bookstores. our first stop was foyle's, a simply immense bookstore: five stories tall in a substantial building. and there dïe überblönde hit london cartographic paydirt:
that's the front of the folded up map; it's 9cm on a side (3½" or so). the back is an overview map of london:
note the concentric squares; those are the limits of the high-resolution maps.
unfolded once, there's said iconic hyperspace map:
and the centerfold:
ah, bliss! we now see hyperspace and its access points mapped onto realspace. there are plenty of maps that show individual wormhole mouths in realspace, but i only found one (large and unwieldy) map that showed how they connect. since we don't actually live in london, we don't actually Just Know that it's possible to take the gallifrey line to frogstar c, but only if you change trains at morlock circus.
and the best part:
the quadrants of the map fold out like cootie catchers/chinese fortune tellers/whatever you call those folding kids' toys, so now we can see small enough streets to actually navigate around london's realspace. that's confusing, because as you can see, even major thoroughfares change names at random (regent street becomes portland place at a random point, for example). i'm really used to US urban streets with names conserved far out into the suburbs, like the state-name avenues around DC or chicago's named and numbered grid-iron streets, which are used practically all the way from milwaukee to gary.
so, this map is wonderful: it has multiple scales for different kinds of navigation, and overlays the two important ways to get around. if you're thinking of going to london, you should probably get one.
fortunately, high on our to-do list was hitting the london bookstores. our first stop was foyle's, a simply immense bookstore: five stories tall in a substantial building. and there dïe überblönde hit london cartographic paydirt:
that's the front of the folded up map; it's 9cm on a side (3½" or so). the back is an overview map of london:
note the concentric squares; those are the limits of the high-resolution maps.
unfolded once, there's said iconic hyperspace map:
and the centerfold:
ah, bliss! we now see hyperspace and its access points mapped onto realspace. there are plenty of maps that show individual wormhole mouths in realspace, but i only found one (large and unwieldy) map that showed how they connect. since we don't actually live in london, we don't actually Just Know that it's possible to take the gallifrey line to frogstar c, but only if you change trains at morlock circus.
and the best part:
the quadrants of the map fold out like cootie catchers/chinese fortune tellers/whatever you call those folding kids' toys, so now we can see small enough streets to actually navigate around london's realspace. that's confusing, because as you can see, even major thoroughfares change names at random (regent street becomes portland place at a random point, for example). i'm really used to US urban streets with names conserved far out into the suburbs, like the state-name avenues around DC or chicago's named and numbered grid-iron streets, which are used practically all the way from milwaukee to gary.
so, this map is wonderful: it has multiple scales for different kinds of navigation, and overlays the two important ways to get around. if you're thinking of going to london, you should probably get one.