Re: Mapman Series 2

In message <3130303031313434431CB69447@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Roger <Roger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> The message <11hgoen171fcud9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> from John P <john@xxxxxxxxxxx> contains these words:
>
> > Mapman series 2 (8 x 30 min shows) goes starts on BBC 2 8.00pm Monday
> > 5th September with
>
> > "Bartholomew?s Reduced Survey for Tourists & Cyclists (1896-1903) How
> > well can Nick do on a 1920s ?Roadster? bicycle? When cycling took off in
> > Britain in a big way in the 1880?s, everybody wanted to get on a bicycle
> > and head for the country. And for all these keen bicyclers Bartholomew
> > made the very first cycling maps. With the best cycling routes and
> > information for the Victorian cyclist these maps were highly popular and
> > distinctive ? it was a whole new way of looking at the country; for
> > leisure and healthy pursuits, freedom, and exploration. Using his own
> > unorthodox methods - extreme mountain biking over a mountain or two ?
> > going breakneck speed down a crevasse, Nick sets out to find the Barts
> > routes through what was the playground of the Victorian age, the Lake
> > District?"
>
> > Enjoy.
>
> I thought it rather poor. Apart from anything else it looked as if it
> had been designed as a one hour program and edited down to 30 minutes by
> a blind man. Did Crane really go instantaneously from partway up
> Hardknott to partway up Black Sails, or did I fall asleep at that point?
> And surely more than a little disingenuous to say that there wasn't a
> bridge for a mile either side of the ford on the Brathay when there is a
> modern footbridge just out of camera shot. (Slater Bridge is only 500m
> upstream as well.)

I'm inclined to be a bit more generous in my assumptions. It appeared to
me that the programme had been videoed in very poor weather conditions.
I've no idea of the amount of time devoted to making of each programme
or the size of the video crew involved, but I'd guess the time was
relatively short and the crew was small. Thus it may have been that
certain aspects of the journey simply did not produce video footage
useful for the programme and hence resulted in the jumps in location and
failures of continuity during editing. It is very difficult to maintain
continuity in dialogue and video without considerable planning and
resources and allowance for difficulties with things such as the
weather. If you ever read up on the planning involved in the early
Attenborough 'Life' series it is quite astounding. David Attenborough,
filmed in some remote and difficult location, would speak to camera in
great detail about the next species and then would magically appear in
that new location and continue the same dialogue, yet in reality the
various bits of film would have been made in a completely different
order and made many months or even years apart.

Anyway returning to Mapman the basic concept of the programme series is
to give a feel for what types of maps were historically used in
different circumstances. Thus it seems to me perfectly acceptable to
hide the presence of a modern bridge in order to illustrate how
contemporary users of the map would have had to ford the stream. The
programme was not about a factual account of a particular route in the
Lake District, it was an illustration of what map would have been used
by cycle tourists in the days before most people owned or used cars.

>
> Circa 1970 I drove along the track from the ford to High Tilberthwaite
> in a Landrover and my memory of it is of a much rougher track than the
> one he rode along and one that would have been impassable to a normal
> car.

My wife has a copy of one of the editions of the Bartholemews Lake
District maps as discussed on the programme, the map was her father's
who was a keen cyclist before and just after the second world war, that
map is dated early 1900s considerably before 1970, and it shows the
details of the route that Crane was discussing.

>
> And previously there was that nonsense in the bike shop. No one could
> possibly be stupid enough to think a loose saddle was a design feature
> and the prat who solemnly offered to tighten the nut could have been a
> good deal more help if he had adjusted the back brake as well rather
> than just saying it didn't work very well.
>

My recollection of bar brakes which I had on my childhood cycle was that
there was very little that would allow efficient adjustment.

My interpretation of that sequence was that it was a contrived attempt
to convey how different bicycles were then compared to now.

Cheers,

Mike
--
M.R. Clark PhD
Cambridge University, Department of Pathology
Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1QP
Tel +44 (0)1223 333705
.

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