The joy of maps
Simon Taylor’s Full throttle about maps (June) struck a chord with me, as I suspect it did with most rally co-drivers of the 1970s and ’80s, before pacenotes were allowed on UK forest rallies. These days, as Simon points out, youngsters grow up with sat-nav on their phones or in their cars, and geography is now taught with little appreciation of the knowledge maps can impart. But ‘back in the day’, geography at school taught us such appreciation, and the ability to correctly interpret a map became a prime asset for rally co-drivers on UK events.
I’m not just talking about the Brits, such as Ian Grindrod, Mike Broad, Dave Whittock or me, but foreign co-drivers such as Arne Hertz, Björn Cederberg and Bruno Berglund also relished the chance to ‘read’ the forest roads. The OS 1:25,000 series was a boon, because the greater detail enabled us to tell our drivers much about the road ahead, to be as close to pacenotes as we could get. A map couldn’t tell you about a blind crest or a hidden bump, but bitter experiences of such places tended to engrave them in our minds, so we could forewarn our drivers of the bad bits, and speed them up on the faster parts where we knew it was ‘flat’. It was satisfying to get it right, and our drivers appreciated that bit of extra knowledge the maps brought.
We were not allowed to mark the maps, so committed our knowledge to memory. It was often viewed as something of a black art, imparting an advantage to those crews with the ability to read the maps with a confidence that brought greater speed, so gradually pacenotes were authorised, initially for the Sunday leg of the RAC Rally, later for the forests overall. Happy days when it was ‘on the maps’ for us co-drivers, a sad day when it came to an end. Phil Short
Ilkley, West Yorkshire