30 Day Map Challenge: Pen and Paper

Maps
Author

Alex Singleton

Published

November 10, 2024

Day 10: Pen and Paper

For this map I have used all of my A Grade at GCSE Art to come up with a hand drawn map (albeit on my iPad) from memory of the street where I spent the first decade of my life.

Some specific features include:

  • The only people that I could remember from the neighborhood which includes a fireman, postman, a lady with parrots and another nice lady across the road who importantly let us through her garden into a field with a big hill for sledging (which happened a lot as this was the 1980s in the NE England). Although I never saw him, the Duke of Northumberland’s pipe player also lived over the road (who I heard a lot).

  • The woods where we used to play, but are now built on; and top left, the Monkey Puzzle tree where when we were very small were taken on “bike rides” to - in fact it was on a 1950s tricycle, and also was pulled up there by rope attached to my dads bike as it was a hill (he is very nice!).

  • The “Green Hill” which my brother and I used to ride bikes down, and the large tree where I rode a bike into opposite my house. I also got knocked off a bike by a dog here too. It was generally an unlucky area for bikes (nothing to do with my coordination).

Based on the above, which I came up with while waiting for my kids to finish some sports, I was intrigued if this is in any way true to life, which you can have a look at on OpenStreetMap.

Some things of note - the “Green Hill” is very small:

The big tree I rode a bike into isn’t really very big and I remembered a wide path as a road.

And this was my house, which is about in the correct location on my map. When we lived there the front garden only had a rockery and a lawn, and was also surrounded by large trees. The StreetView images are from 2009, so things may well have changed now. I do note that the new owner appears to have an Aston Martin, which says a lot about the changing demographics of Alnwick since the 1980s! By contrast we had a 100k mile Ford Cortina.

Something else that I never really thought about as a child, but the other thing about this street is the really weird name! Oakey Balks… I would love to know the origins of this!