Five colour maps

The name harks back to those wonderful words in event flyers - when getting a full roster of colours on an orienteering map meant something special.   Long before laser printers and OCAD, when map production was in the hands of a small minority who had mastered the black arts of Letraset, scribing and aligning all the colour plates.

This blog is the product of a realisation that our mapping heritage may be lost, so time to dig out my 36 year old map collection and find a few gems.

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Castle Neroche and Staple Common
Feb 1973
1:15,000
25'
ST2715 - Somerset, SWOA, England
Survey by SWOA members
Drawn DJ Parkin
Modern maps: Staple Hill  

A notorious map from the latter days of the transition to specialist mapping.  It was used for the 1973 South West Championships, I missed running on it by a couple of months.
Very much an OS conversion job, notice the lack of magnetic north lines, they were added as map corrections. There were a lot of map corrections.
Also famed for its blot.


Neroche went on to hold many prestigious events in later years including a national in 2002. A lot of the solid yellow on the west side of the map is now forested.

Castle Neroche is a beautiful place and well worth a visit. I have run there twice, once during a contour only exercise while at school and in the 2002 National Event.