Posted by Mike Field on November 22, 2018 at 19:00:13 user mikefield.
Dave Thewlis has now very kindly made my two new maps of the Broads available for free download on the All Things Ransome website.
While of course the maps are of real places (unlike the imaginary Lake in the north), they're somewhat different to current Ordnance Survey maps. First, I've tried to show the road and rail networks as they were in the 1930s rather than as they are now, and I've also shown more-or-less only as much of both as the children themselves used or that would have been evident to them from the water. Other features, like St Benet's Abbey, the Ranworth church tower, and the Cantley sugarbeet factory that were also visible from the water have been included. But the focus is on the waterways, with all the Ransome-specific features like No.7 nest, the Wilderness, the Roaring Donkey, Teasel's mooring locations, and so on also shown in order to allow you to see the children's locations and trace their movements as you read the two Broads books.
I experimented early on with map size, coverage, and orientation, and I finally concluded that AR had it right all along. So I've retained the Northern and Southern Rivers maps as he has them in the books' endpapers, with only marginal indicative overlap between the two.
(I still haven't entirely given up the idea of showing the entire Broads region on one large map, but not very much has happened in that direction yet.)
Because of the size of the geographical areas covered and the detail they contain, I would strongly advise anyone who wants to print the maps to do so at A3 (or larger) size if at all possible.
Finally, please note that the Lake map has had some minor modifications made to it. If you've already downloaded it you might like to have the updated version.
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