Monday, April 25, 2011

Interesting Legend

It's interesting, all the stones mentioned - stone walls, ruined stone walls, small and large boulders, boulder clusters and cairns, boulder fields and stony ground and bare rock -  in the legend of this Delaware Valley Orienteering Association (DVOA) Map: http://www.dvoa.org/gadget/kartat/114.jpg


("Orienteering is a family of sports that requires navigational skills using a map and compass to navigate from point to point in diverse and usually unfamiliar terrain, and normally moving at speed. Participants are given a topographical map, usually a specially prepared orienteering map, which they use to find control points.[1] Originally a training exercise in land navigation for military officers, orienteering has developed many variations. Among these, the oldest and the most popular is foot orienteering. For the purposes of this article, foot orienteering serves as a point of departure for discussion of all other variations, but basically any sport that involves racing against a clock and requires navigation using a map is a type of orienteering."
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orienteering )


I just sent the link to someone interested in ancient stone work who lives down Delaware way...

5 comments :

pwax said...

I hope they take a look around.

It is usually with great hope that I look at orienteering maps. But the couple times I followed up on it were disappointments. I found their "rock piles" were usually big messes of debris and that the interesting piles got missed by the cartography. But I am sure this will turn up something eventually.

Norman said...

Could the map be posted so that it is actually 1:1? I live close enough to Brandywine that I'd be interested in exploring it. Plus, I used to be heavily involved in orienteering in Canada.

Norman

pwax said...

Norman:
On newer versions of Internet Explorer there is a view % (at lower right) that can go up to 400%.

Rob Buchanan said...

I've found many interesting sites by identifying stone features on orienteering maps. Interesting discoveries can be made by looking for:
- groups of "cairn" or "rock pile" symbols that are distant from stone wall grids
- isolated stone wall segments
- isolated ruins
Fortunately many of the state and county parks near where I live have been O mapped and the maps provide numerous opportunities for explorations. Many forest areas in New England have been mapped by the New England Orienteering Club.

Tim MacSweeney said...

Norman: the link above - http://www.dvoa.org/gadget/kartat/114.jpg - shows an enlarged view when you click on it.