Cutting to the Chase

In which The Author should have let his fingers do the walking

After really losing patience with the last few days' fucking around with that bloody Sony wristband thing, I decided to have a little look around Aberdare to see if I could buy a map measurer.

I used to have one a number of years ago – a compact little gadget which worked on a number of scales, and had a nice digital display for the output. I've got pretty much the whole of Wales mapped out at 1:50,000 and a fair amount at 1:25,000. I could map out the route provisionally, and then just check out the potential pitfalls on foot later on. The problem is that I haven't seen my map measurer for ages, and I've no idea where it went (ironically). I was looking for something along the same lines.

But this is Aberdare, remember. Even though we're on the southern edge of the Brecon Beacons, and a central location for tourists wanting to explore the breathtaking scenery around the national park, the Vale of Neath and the Valleys themselves, there's nowhere (apart from Argos) that sells anything like outdoor gear. You'd be hard pressed to find an Ordnance Survey map at 1:50,000 scale, never mind anything more detailed. There used to be an army surplus shop in town. That's gone. There used to be another one on the Aberaman Industrial Estate. Even assuming it's still open, it's a bit of a trek for what could conceivably have been a wasted journey.

I looked in every shop that sells anything remotely stationery-related – Wilko, B&M, The Works, Gareth Rees's – before giving it up as a bad job. I wondered about jumping on a train and going to Pontypridd. There's a reasonably large stationer's at the top of town, which might have had something in stock. There's also an army surplus shop, but the last time I looked in the window they seemed to have some rather unpleasant political posters in there. (Think of the shop in Falling Down and you'll see where I'm coming from.)

With no guarantee I'd have found anything suitable in Pontypridd anyway, I decided to see if I could pick something up online. I could probably buy something from an internet retailer, get it in a couple of days, and at least get an idea of the distance involved.

So I typed 'map measurer online' into a search engine and found a few devices that seemed as though they'd do the job. Some were the old-school 'wheel on a stick' jobs, which I remember from pre-digital days. Some were more advanced versions of the gizmo I used to have. I was browsing through the search results, and suddenly I came across Mapometer.com UK. I thought 'That might be worth a look' and clicked on the link.

It's bloody perfect! I can set my starting point and trace out the exact route using Google satellite imagery, the OS maps, or Google Maps. It tells me the exact distance I'll have to travel, and gives me information about elevations as well. It puts distance markers in at intervals, so you can break the route into stages. Best of all, I can save my project online and amend it later, depending on the results of the field trials (especially down the valley).

I'll still have to check out parts of the route, of course, to make sure they're suitable for my purposes, but this is going to save me a hell of a lot of time, effort and shoe leather. The old Yellow Pages TV ads had a point, it seems. Sometimes you should just let your fingers do the walking.