According to the traditional Scottish ballad, “Ye’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low, and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.” So True! High roads traverse crests and peaks, an arduous, challenging route, unsuited for speed. Low roads tend to parallel the smooth ascending or descending course of rivers.
When planning a road trip that intends to savour the trip itself rather than just the destination, you have the option of taking the high or low. The high offers vistas, unobstructed views of sunrises, sunsets, cooler temperatures, higher winds and alpine life (such as mountain goats, soaring hawks, conifers and even ice fields).
The low is where interesting villages, mill towns and agricultural activity are found. Encounters with people, grazing cattle, deer wild turkeys and turtles are possible. There are opportunities to observe the industry of beavers constructing their dams and lodges. The low roads favour the cyclist. Compared to the highs, they are the roads that offer the facilities of gas stations, shopping for food, other necessities and souvenirs.
Map scale is important! A scale of “1:9,500,000″ gives the coverage of a typical three-day drive,= 1,540 km, the width of an 8 ½ x 10” sheet of paper. . “1:2,000,000″ shows township reads, streams and ponds.”1:25,000” zooms in on details such as street and park names. Very useful for cyclists (and hikers and canoeists).
Using the scale line of a map, take note of what the diameter of a dime and a quarter cover. That’s a quick way of calculating straight-line distances.
Watch out for the shortcomings and tricks of maps provided to tourists. Most have no scale. To determine scale, drive one kilometer as measured on your car’s odometer. Bingo! You can now determine the scale of the map.
The biggest deception I ever encountered was a map provided by an Irish tourist centre. No scale! To establish it, I used the technique described in the above paragraph. Used my bicycle’s odometer to calculate distance from village A to village B. However, to my puzzlement, it did not apply to distances from B to C, or C to D! We discovered that areas of little interest were shrunk, areas with greater interest were stretched!
L’article “Ye’ll take the high road…” est apparu en premier sur Cornwall Seaway News.
