Some people just won't listen!

as in more crowded, fewer hills... etc

Course it is, gadabout! When we used to travel down to Oxford we always thought of south as all downhill after Tebay service station

I can read a map beautifully, when it's on a table in front of me. It's the actual roads that mess things up.

Thank God for Sat navs!

I have a good sense of direction but when I visit New Zealand I am completely disoriented.The sun is in the wrong place!

JessM - you are mistaken, according to a local Town Council officer north is uphill!!! And she wasn't the only one to think that.

Janeainsworth your post reminds me of a similar city 'tour'. After some difficult work in Northern Ireland, an elderly colleague & I had driven down to North Dublin for a workshop she was leading there. It was a very dark, wet night in December & she was meant to know where we were going. We'd already had a few near misses before she admitted her eyes weren't good in the dark so I took over the driving. I then discovered she had no sense of direction & the person we were meeting would no longer be at the venue. In the midst of some desolate estates we stopped to ask for directions from a young man, the only person in the street. He told us to take the 'T'ird turning on the right' - it wasn't. Turning back he told us again, 'T'ird turning on the right' in the opposite direction. He of course hadn't a clue but didn't want to appear unhelpful. Eventually we got a mobile signal & were somehow rescued some time after midnight.

Just checked out The Champion, feetle. Wow; that was some comic! Like the sound of the huskey guy.

Once in the rear seat of a four-seater aircraft I was given an aeronautical chart do I could follow our route - and was advised to orient it to match the terrain - it was fascinating! Not as much fun as when I was able to sit in friont and control the thing, though, whee! Good thing I had read Rockfist Rogan stories as a kid...

Love 'em myself. Bit mystified yesterday as to why OS had the beach, mud flats and sand dunes all a uniform yellow with a footpath going across. But I suppose the topography does shift over time.
I once taught a woman to read maps so she could get a job. Up til then she couldn't venture out on her own (she was an immigrant). I remember the fact that N was always at the top was a revelation. As was the idea of a map book, with a big map chopped up and made into a volume.

I love maps too Gadabout having spent many happy hours in my teens plotting youth hostelling trips in the Lakes, Peak District and Yorkshire Dales, and then seeing the country come to life as we toiled up hill and down dale to reach the next destination.
However when driving alone they certainly have their limitations, and on one occasion I found myself driving hopelessly round Birmingham city centre at 10pm on a Friday night looking for the Thistle Hotel, the roads apparently bearing little resemblance to their appearance on the map. That, and the one-way system reduced me to such a state of desperation that I decided if I hadn't found the hotel in 10 minutes I would just have to go back to Newcastle and miss the course I was supposed to be on the next day.
I came upon the hotel quite by chance and dissolved into tears when the woman on the front desk asked in a concerned tone if I was alright
I've now got a TomTom

I had problems once finding the M1 northbound because all the road signs said M1 south;it did eventually dawn on me that the M1 North and the M1 south were actually in the same direction .

I just love maps & can get engrossed in what OS maps can tell you about all manner of things. Having a map is my security blanket & I never worry about getting lost if I choose to follow my nose or am travelling alone. I'd favour taking maps to a Desert Island over the Bible or Shakespeare. Not surprisingly Geography was my subject & I married another Geographer who gained his love of the subject from his aunt who read Geography back in 1910. He also married his sister off to a Geog research student & my sis & her ex were both Geographers.

Much was our dismay when our elder daughter had enough spatial awareness to find her way round a dance stage but had no idea where she was on the ground. Her dyslexic husband ended up in Birmingham instead of Wembley & crossed Tower Bridge 6 times so he persuaded the DLA to fund a SatNav. I then realised it is how one's brain is wired!Luckily their kids love maps.

But Greatnan, when coming off a motorway you can't just turn right or left or whatever. You have to turn off along the slip road and then go round and round in circles. Who knows which way you're facing by then?

Envious - one trick I use is to work out my route beforehand and write the numbers of motorway junctions, or the names of towns, on a piece of card which I keep on the passenger seat for quick reference. I number them and leave a good space in between.
I could print off the directions from AA Route Finder, or ViaMichelin, but I find they give too much detail in the written version, although the maps are useful.

I am puzzled about the problems people face. If I am going North (in Europe!) and the place I want is to the East of the road I am on, I know I need to turn to the right. If it is to the West, I need to turn left.
Coming back, driving South, it is the reverse - place to the East, turn left, place to the West, turn right.
I usually have pretty poor spatial relationship skills - in intelligence tests it is always those questions that ask which of three figures completes a series that let me down. And solid geometry always floored me - I just couldn't visualise a cube or a cylinder unless I had one in front of me.
Perhaps I have spent so much time studying maps and using them on the road that it is just second nature now.
I am certainly not mocking anybody who wishes to turn their map upside down - I just can't understand how it helps!

Just looked up a ordnance survey map...

I think now I'd be scared to drive and read a map in your country! Our maps are easy to read and figure out! I remember also being taught in school quite extensively how to read a road map.

This thread has made me chuckle, I've got a couple of friends who can't decide which is left or right, so I make the decisions when driving.

I read maps with N to the top, but occasionally I turn them around.

I always look at a map before I use my satnav, and if I'm not sure then I stop and check!
However, I'm never too sure which is East or West, and if I get to a motorway junction, I don't have a clue whether to go E or W

Good job we're not all the same

And insensitivity to other's feelings is another.

I can read maps, but when I was negotiating the A-Z of various unknown towns I often did turn the map the other way up to help me know whether I should be turning left or right. My daughters have never driven using maps, they just put their satnav on. Their dad is certain that on the day the satellites drop out of the sky, the whole youth wing in every country will have no idea where they are.
On the gender stereotype discussion - irony is one thing, provocation another I feel.

AKA for you , will you join me in a cup of later ?

When I did the road trip from the north of South Island, NZ, down to Doubtful Sound, I still used my maps in the conventional way!

Absent, it's like having to learn a new geographical language.

I think Nonu is being ironic and having a laugh. The 'My Guy' was the clue folks .

Well said Gracesmum. And I've also been thinking of the Italian ship's Captain who steered his ship onto the rocks and caused so many deaths in order to wave to a friend on shore.