I do love a map – not the online type of sat nav map that we’re so familiar with – but the old paper type.
Every now and then after I’ve spent some time out on the road, I get a bit anxious – I feel a little unrooted. It’s not very often – but, when I get that rising feeling – I get a map out and lose myself in the honeycombed places along the folds and creases in the paper.
"For a short time I become a time-travelling psychogeographer."
I have a few older maps that have a nostalgic edge – they show places and routes that have now disappeared.
My maps are stuffed away in drawers or tacked to the roof in the van until now: I’ve devised a way to hold them all together.
A couple of vertical hangers and some hooked clips have brought these little fonts of wellbeing out into the open. At a moments notice I can fly into any of Britain’s National Parks or follow the Grand Canal in Venice or walk the Champs Elysees in Paris.
It’s come as something of a surprise that even printed notions of place can help me feel rooted. I love to follow the roads mapped out into arterial loci or find patterns in town and city networks that have echoes from ancient times.
For a short time I become a time-travelling psychogeographer – far away from the heated photographer stuck in a service station on the M6 motorway.
"It's come as something of a surprise that even printed notions of place can help me feel rooted. I love to follow the roads mapped out into arterial loci or find patterns in town and city networks that have echoes from ancient times. "
