Escapist’s toolkit: the maps

Somebody’s mapped the quietest, darkest and remotest places to go.

HOW DO YOU define getting away from it all? Escaping the trill of mobile phones? All noise? A seat at the bar in the pub at the end of the world? The furthest point from any traffic? From the sound of ‘Shape of You’ by Ed Sheerhan?

Traffic-haters should know the furthest point from any road is 2000ft up Ruadh Stac Mor – a lonely Munro (Scottish mountain over 3000ft) in the Fisherfield Forest area of the west Highlands – 6.48 miles from the even merest strand of Tarmac. Peace-lovers should know the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) has mapped the levels of tranquility county-by-county, and found a spot in Kielder Mires National Nature Reserve in Northumberland – two hours’ walk from the nearest human habitation – the most tranquil of all.

For the thirsty, the remotest pub in Britain is the Old Forge in Inverie, an 18 mile walk or seven-mile boat journey from the rest civilisation and indeed the National Grid.

If your non-walking partner simply must have a city break, what about St Davids in Pembrokeshire (pop. 1841)? A cathedral it has; a multi-storey, Starbucks or ring-road, not so much.

Meanwhile while the mobile net closes all the time, there are still large areas where coverage on all networks is weak or non-existent. You can find ringtone-free zones marked red on the map at opensignal.com/networks.

You can’t beat a big view for clearing the mind and sending you back to your berth in civilisation with renewed perspective – and the biggest of all is to be found in the national parks at night. CPRE found that while light pollution has leant cataracts to our trunk roads and conurbations, our national parks are still wells of inky blackness, with the Dales and Northumberland, for example, enjoying views of up to 96% pristineness. Here, with the naked eye, you can see up to 14,700,000,000,000,000,000 miles into the cosmos. Says CPRE expert Emma Marrington: “Millions of people are so used to living under the constant glow of light pollution they would be astounded by a truly dark night sky”.