The Ordnance Survey

As keen walkers in Ardnamurchan's hills, we are deeply indebted to the Ordnance Survey for the excellent maps it produces.  For our purposes, we always carry the Explorer map 390, 'Ardnamurchan',  which covers our end of the peninsula as well as Moidart, Sunart and Loch Shiel.

However, the map has its limitations.  Walking across very rough ground, with frequent hills and valleys and no real landmarks - such as in the wilderness to the east of Ockle (above) - the 1:25,000 map lacks the contour detail required to help us work out exactly where we are.  While we have never been seriously lost - yet - there have been occasions, as during a search for a remote lochan, when we really didn't know exactly where we were. At such times we talk of buying a GPS machine, but being 'slightly lost' is part of the fun of walking across the hills.

We have never doubted the accuracy of OS maps, but the one criticism we have of our local map is that not enough time and effort has gone in to finding and marking local place names - not only those of human features like villages, but the natural ones such as streams, hills, headlands and beaches.  In the old days, this might not have mattered so much, for those who lived locally knew them and passed them on to their children.  Now that so many of those children have left the area, and the older people are dying, there is a serious danger that many long-established names will be lost.

It could be argued that this isn't the OS's job.  Yet it ought to be, as no-one else is going to do it, and these old names are, in many ways, part of our national treasure.  OS mappers do spend time in an area when a revision is being made to local maps, but they don't seem to spend long enough talking to the few people who still know these names.  Much of what is on the present maps is the same as was on the original maps dating back to the late 19th century.

Mapping these days is so much easier than it was, with much of the information coming off increasingly accurate satellite images.  The old technology, which required the use and maintenance of things like the concrete triangulation points, has gone, freeing up time.  Couldn't the OS use this time to find out and preserve old place names?