Life offers too many distractions. Even before God invented the Internet as a cunning device to distract writers from ever actually putting pen to paper, He had created maps and railway timetables. Marcel Proust used the later to good effect as a way of inducing sleep and also, it is said, as a stimulus to creativity. He once described the French railway timetable as “the most intoxicating romance in the lover’s library.” No surprise, perhaps, that there was never a Mrs Proust upon whom Marcel might inflict a late-evening litany of departure and arrival times.
In truth, while we share Proust’s affection for railway timetables, if really pushed we would have to say that a good Ordnance Survey map probably has the edge over the average timetable. The maps produced by Britain’s national mapping agency, the Ordnance Survey, are simply wonderful. And there is perhaps no finer way of whiling away a winter evening — or even a summer one — than in perusing a map or two. Thus it was that, despite pressing projects not yet started and others only half done, we happened one day recently to spend a happy few hours looking at a map of the Trossachs area of Scotland (Landranger Sheet 57 for those who like to keep tabs on these things).
As these things go, the area covered by Landranger Sheet 57 is unexceptional. It maps the upper part of the Forth Valley, including the river’s source in lovely Loch Ard. There are two Munros to satisfy peak baggers: mighty Ben Vorlich and the only slightly-lessmighty Stùc a’ Chroin, the very name of which seems calculated to deter those inclined to attempt an ascent. The name translates as ‘dangerous peak’. Perhaps the cartographers thought they would look a little foolish if, instead of the Gaelic Stùc a’ Chroin, they merely wrote the legend ‘dangerous peak’ on their map. Stùc a’ Chroin sounds deliciously exotic. Dangerous peak just sounds naff.
The map also captures a nice slice of Scottish history, sweeping from Bannockburn in the south-east of the sheet all the way to Rob Roy’s grave on the map’s northern margins. Being a map produced by Englishmen, it includes the dates of battles (even those where the English were defeated, such as the clash at Bannockburn in 1314) and neglects to mention that Rob Roy was probably better known in the glens by his Gaelic name: Raibeart Ruadh.
The map also captures a nice slice of Scottish history, sweeping from Bannockburn in the south-east of the sheet all the way to Rob Roy’s grave on the map’s northern margins.
Sheet 57 has the usual feast of cartographic detail that we expect from Ordnance Survey. There are hills like Holehead and Slymaback, and farms with exquisitely poetic names: Naggyfauld and Moss-side of Boquhapple. This sheet even records a scatter of houses that are evidently known as Pendicles of Collymoon and — this gets better and better — just across the River Forth from the said Pendicles is a farmstead called Nether Easter Offerance. No doubt the lambs gambol on the bank of the Forth, much to the delight of all at Pendicles, until the day comes when they (viz. the lambs, not the Pendicullians) are offered up in Paschal sacrifice.
There are dozens of other inscriptions on the map that invite queries. Why is there no railway station at the community called Balfron Station? And who is or was the Sir Archibald whose name is recalled in a small plantation on the gentle north slopes of the Campsie Fells?
We roamed over Sheet 57, plotting a route from Badshalloch to Cultybraggan and back again. On the way, we spotted the Wallace Monument — which we recall in real life as having qualities not revealed by any Ordnance Survey map. It’s an assertively phallic structure on a wee crag overlooking the River Forth. And we happen to know that the monument was funded by public subscription. The map was mute on these finer details.
It was in fact a Scottish visitor to the Austrian Tyrol, with whom we happened to share a dram (or two) in Innsbruck, who communicated some interesting intelligence on the Wallace Monument — namely that one of the donors who coughed up funds for the structure was Giuseppi Garibaldi. “Actually,” said our Tartan informant, “Signor Garibaldi was sort of Scottish.” It was our turn to buy the whisky and we sat and listened to an improbable tale about how Garibaldi’s dad was one Baldy Garrow, son of a Scottish shoemaker who decided to leave his homeland and move to the continent.
“And we’ve nae lost our links with the continent,” said the Scottish traveller. “There’s Tuscans in Causewayhead, even today, not to mention folk from Flanders out on the Carse.”
Would that maps could talk and tell tales like that! The Ordnance Survey map merely marks Abbey Craig, a flecked line north of the Forth, and the Wallace Monument. Not a hint of Garibaldi. Being the cautious souls we are, we took the news from Innsbruck with a proverbial grain of salt. But a little subsequent research revealed that Garibaldi did indeed write a letter declaring his support for the notion of there being a monument to William Wallace on Abbey Craig. That letter, plus his modest but inadvertent influence on the Scottish confectionary industry (viz. the sumptuous Garibaldi biscuit) and the occasional if somewhat irrational use of Garibaldi as a middle name in Scotland, seem to constitute the sum total of Garibaldi’s impact on Scottish culture.
Innsbruck and the itinerant Scotsman were but distant memories by the time we browsed Sheet 57. But we took on board the traveller’s comments on his home region. No evidence on the map of Tuscans in Causewayhead but a quick google reveals that the Corrieri family have been doing good things with gnocchi and ice cream (probably not together) in Causewayhead for decades — and they do indeed hail from Tuscany. Of the veracity of our informant’s reports of settlers from the Low Countries “out on the Carse” we remain less certain. Local wisdom often bears little relation to the truth, as the early English cartographer John Norden was quick to remind those too inclined to place their faith in local hearsay.
But wait. What’s this we now spy on Sheet 57? An area called Flanders Moss and a veritable posse of polders. North-west of the brackish moss is the Lake of Menteith — itself an interesting place name, for in a land that is so full of lochs it is very unusual to fall into a lake. Indeed, although we can think of a handful of lakes in Scotland’s Southern Uplands, we know no other north of the Central Belt. So the Lake of Menteith is surely the northernmost ‘lake’ in Britain.
Where were we before tumbling into the Lake of Menteith? Ah, yes. Polders. Plenty of them. And looking at old maps of the same area, we find polders (sometimes poldars) dating back to the sixteenth century. Dozens of websites creatively make links between Flanders Moss and the Low Countries, often adducing the use of the word polder as evidence of early drainage activities by settlers from the continent. The story is evidently rendered in many different ways, but the leitmotif is always the same: settlers from Flanders arriving to bring order to the peaty Carse. We are sceptical. Poldar and polder are probably Gaelic in origin, almost certainly derived from the word for a stream bed and the word for black or darkness. Who knows for sure.
But that’s the beauty of maps. They invite the wildest speculation and tell a story about culture and landscape. Though not necessarily the same story as that told by locals. We chanced on Sheet 57, which escorted us from the Pendicles of Collymoon past the summit of Ben Vorlich to the dense and peaty wastelands of Scottish toponymy. We think a similar tale could be woven around any randomly chosen Ordnance Survey map.