14 replies to this topic

[Steve Crow]

Hi

This is my first posting. I am an amateur cartographer living in London - I do this purely for fun.

I visited the Greek island of Gavdos in 1999 and found that the only tourist maps available were crude, hand-drawn and inaccurate.

I returned in 2005 with a GPS receiver and over the course of 10 visits, gathered the information to make this map.

 gavdos_01.gif   557.8K   292 downloads

The map is 1:25,000 with 10m contours and when printed is 40cm x 40cm.

The 20m contours and drainage lines were obtained from an old Greek 1:50,000 map and reprojected.

I interpolated the 10m contours using observation on the island and used satellite images to fix the coastline. All place names are from asking locals (the population is around 40).

The only people to see this map are a handful of islanders and a few friends. I would really appreciate any comments, feedback or criticism.

Many thanks

Steve

[Hans van der Maarel]

Awesome! It seems to be more topographic (OS-inspired) than tourist to me, but from what I gather you didn't intend to make a tourist map. The only thing I can think of so far is maybe add the place names in Greek as well (I assume that's how they signposted, so that would make navigation a bit easier).

[david17tym]

Nice clean work Steve, sounds like a real labour of love.
One small detail, shouldn't the UTM zone be N instead of S?
Dave

[Steve Crow]

Thank you Hans, you are right - it is OS inspired.

Regarding the place names, there are very few signposts on the island - all bilingual. Only 9 or 10 place names on the map actually appear on signposts. Most of the rest are only known to locals. I have considered a Greek version though.

I have also attempted a manual shaded relief of the island if you are interested.

[Hans van der Maarel]

I have also attempted a manual shaded relief of the island if you are interested.

Bring it on

[Steve Crow]

One small detail, shouldn't the UTM zone be N instead of S?
Dave

Thank you Dave, a small detail but a very important one! I don't know how I missed that.

This is exactly the reason I submitted to this forum - very few non-cartographers would have spotted an error like that.

Thanks again.

[DaveB]

Excellent work on your labor of love! I don't really have anything to add to the previous comments, except to say the points and some of the text looks really small and tricky to read (but my eyes are not getting any younger, as they say).

I guess this also answers "how do you map an undefinable path"...

[Dennis McClendon]

Very handsome work, and I guess my questions are rather high-level ones.

Unless the intended users are military, I wonder about the use of UTM north rather than geographic north. These days, it seems like there'd be far more people trying to match up with GPS/satnav phones and the like, and they'd be making use of a decimal lat-long grid rather than the UTM grid. But the lat-long grid is confusingly skewed.

In the legend, the notes for the typography representing church and "feature" seem rather odd to me. Church has a symbol, which is already labeled, and there's something rather meta about having "feature" as a feature.

Perhaps "trig. point" is familiar to others, but I'd be inclined to call it a spot elevation or (if marked) a benchmark.

Finally, if you're looking for more work I've recently become intrigued by this combination of contours and shading that makes a map like this much more readable for civilians:



(grabbed from the marvelous Gmap4 online US topo viewer)

[rudy]

I like it! with the hhillshade you're working on, it should come out as a nice finished product.

One comments - in the legend you list a number of trail types, the last one being "No definable path." but it appears defined on the map - at least it is location. What is your definition of this category? If it is not a definable path, it could go anywhere, couldn't it?

[Agnar Renolen]

Nice and tidy work, especially with the labelling.

The white background gives good contrast to whatever information displayed on top. But it can be a bit hars to look at in sunlight.

Depending on your intended audience (and if you have the tools to do it) you might experiment with replacing the contours with a shaded relief alltogehter. You will notice that information on the map, particularly linear information such as trails and road will stand out better as they don't have to 'compete' with the contours.

Agnar

[Steve Crow]

One comments - in the legend you list a number of trail types, the last one being "No definable path." but it appears defined on the map - at least it is location. What is your definition of this category? If it is not a definable path, it could go anywhere, couldn't it?

Yes, the "No definable path". I've struggled over this.

What I'm refering to is a route with no markings on the ground that is dictated by local geography, trees etc. In other words, it is the obvious way to go, but is not marked - it's the natural route.

To be honest I had no idea what else to call it and I would welcome any suggestions.

[tonyw]

Sometimes the solution is in the plain English, so taking cues from your text description:

"poorly marked trail"
"unmarked path"
"'rough path"
"animal path"
"animal track"
"intermittent path"
"foot path, unmarked"

The other option is if there is a particular destination at the end of the trail, perhaps the legend can be "trail" and the line very ephemeral (dotted line, very lightly coloured line, etc). The implication that hey, there's this neat destination and the faintness of the line implies there's some kind of obvious path to follow.

Nice work and very worthwhile project. I'll echo others and suggest replacing the contour lines with hillshade relief. I'm used to mentally pushing the contours to the back of my mind, but tourists are likely to give the same weight to contour lines as roads and be confused.

-Tony

Yes, the "No definable path". I've struggled over this.

What I'm refering to is a route with no markings on the ground that is dictated by local geography, trees etc. In other words, it is the obvious way to go, but is not marked - it's the natural route.

[Steve Crow]

Sometimes the solution is in the plain English, so taking cues from your text description:

"poorly marked trail"
"unmarked path"
"'rough path"
"animal path"
"animal track"
"intermittent path"
"foot path, unmarked"

-Tony

Thanks Tony. I like "Unmarked Path". I think I'm going to go with that.

[François Goulet]

I agree with the others...

It's a fine looking map!

[MapMedia]

Steve - Impressive map, especially the contours and the GPS excursions and interviews. The true map making process. Now if you said that you had surveyed the island to achieve the contours, that would be something
I was wondering how bathymetric lines would look on your map, but that opens the map use to other uses such as yachts and possibly fishing.

Also want to congratulate you on the hillshading effort - Is there a version of the map with hillshade and contour together?