h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I managed to locate a somewhat antique OS map

*Blows of dust*

It cost a whole 44p and the scale is one inch to one mile . I found another Snowdon map but that cost 6/6 so I thought this one might be slightly more in date

However, I've found the ridge we scrambled and it says Bwlchysaethau Y Lliwedd. I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce that one

6/6? 36p in real money. Compared to over a fiver for the 1:50,000 scale these days, £7 for a 1:25,000 and the same again if you want it laminated so it lasts more than two trips (or half a trip if it's raining).

Bwlchyseathau Y Lliwedd, you (don't) say? That's easy! Listen, it goes like...

*consults handy OS guide to Welsh place names*

...so:

...

*wipes spit off of monitor*

OK, let's not try that again.

Utterly useless factoid: Bwlch-y-Saethau means "Pass of the Arrow" or somesuch similar, also according to the handy guide - a free download from the OS website (</plug&gt. They do one for Gealic place names, and, oddly enough, Scandinavian place names too (really this time).

They are a price , and you really do the laminated maps or you end up with some kind of lattice useful for nothing at all.

Such is what I thought would happen if I attempted to say it

Oh they do free down loads then? Available at the OS website?

They are, in the "Did You know" part of "Free and Fun". Or if you're feeling lazy: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/freefun/didyouknow/placenames/index.html

A friend of a friend works for OS and gets a hefty discount, but I don't really know him well enough to scrounge maps through him. You can tell who he works for: when he organised a weekend out recently, he gave my friend a ten-figure grid reference for the house thay were staying at .(10 figures = 1 metre accuracy; I'm not sure whether the reference was for the front door or the back door )

*Goes to have a look*

I think the front door. However would you find a fraction of a millimeter along a map anyway?

Unfortunately no translation for Hemel Hempstead, found a definition once as 'undulating farmstead'. I can understand why farmstead maybe, but undulating? .

I know that Hemel means heaven in Dutch, but I doubt that's where it actually comes from! Or whether or not it's an accurate description....



It is kinda undulating. Well I live on a hill at any rate!

It's not too bad a place but I can think of plenty better ones, most of the places I've been to actually

Well, I'm half way up Galley hill myself, there is an up and down quality about it in an undulating sort of maner.

Some times, the meaning of a place name isn't so seemingly irrelevant. A couple of years ago there was a tale going round of some poor visitor to South Wales who got horribly lost on the M4. He was trying to navigate by reference to a mysterious place called Gwasanathau, which appears regularly on the M'way roadsigns. But all he ended up getting was horribly confused, until it occured to him that "Gwasanathau" is actually Welsh for "Services"

great

Took me several months to work out why the beehive statue in the Beeston high street, felt a bit when I worked it out

Though how a small village outside Hemel got called Cow Roast is anyones guess

Beehive statue? Oh, that beehive statue. Of course . I hardly notice it these days, even when the beekeeper gets his hair painted red, or whatever else the local youth think'll be hilariously amusing to do to him. It's funny what you get used to and take for granted. At least it is relevant, which is more than can be said for the novelty marble pigeon perch in the Square.

Cow Roast, eh? I'm afraid I don't have the wit to attempt a guess for that one! Sounds tasty, though I bet it's not as interesting as it sounds.

I notice it becuase on several occasions I've almost walked into it on the way to Sainsbury's. Well, I suppose there are a lot of pigeons .

Pigeons used to be rock doves, an Asian bird with fairly low numbers due to a tendancy to nest on the cliffs cut by waterfalls. Then they discovered that buildings were good subsitute cliffs...

Apparently the pub there had very good food, but then it closed down, so there really is no point in visiting anymore.

"But all he ended up getting was horribly confused, until it occured to him that "Gwasanathau" is actually Welsh for "Services"

Similar thing happened to me when i was in Austria recently. Kept seeing signs for a place called 'Endree' or something similar.. After seeing the same sign appearing every few miles for about 30 mins, i finally decided that 'Endree' wasn't a *very* large conurbation, but in fact Austrian for 'exit'...

Never let it be said that i'm slow on the uptake...

Well at least you didn't try and find this 'Endree'

I'm frequently slow on the uptake . but no examples involve miss translations of road signs.

Your post about the beekeeper really got me thinking: I hardly notice it now but when it first I remeber it was the most curious thing in the world (or at least in Beeston, which amounted to much the same thing at that time). But when did it first appear, I mused? So I ask Mum; cue one hugely enjoyable nostalgia trip over dinner, gradually working back through time to when my parents moved into this house, taking everything with them including the garden shed ("is it a cricket pavillion?" asked one of the new neighbours as it was being erected). Ta muchly!

Oh, and since we're on a theme of pointless and useless facts, we eventually worked out I was probably about 9 when the statue first appeared.

I love conversations over dinner.

Now that is a useless fact.

I found a fantastic book yesterday called "Ridges of Snowdonia" by Steve Ashton, that has walks covering virtually all the places we've mentioned in this thread (but not the M4 services or the exits off the Austrian autobahn). What make this guide different is that each route has an accompaying description, not of the route but the personal *experience* - the feelings, emotions, random thoughts and the like that you get on a walk. It's great to be able to identify with so much of what's written there.

My favourite bit so far is Steve's thoughts on the Snowdon summit cafe:

"The micro environment of the summit cafe is no less bizarre. That people who have expended so much in getting to the top - whether it be effort on the walk or money on the train - should choose to celebrate by dining in this place is an irony of unlimited interest to amateur philosophers. The only rational explanation is that these people are penitents enjoying the climax of their flagellation. I hope it hurts"

Wicked.

One of my friends last year asked of rambling 'don't you get bored?' I explained that she obviously had never been rambling.

That sums up the cafe very well. I admit to finding it very useful a couple of years back however for refueling my little sister. She finds three miles along the flat hard going, so having gone up Snowdon (or more accurately, having been dragged up Snowdon) she needed more food than we had carried with us. She'd insisted on making the trip, but I had to carry her most of the way down.

You'd think with a name like . . . . . . I'd be able to follow all this Welsh stuffgoing on but hey.


My old optician on the other hand . . .

Now there are lots of confusing names out there . I can't pronounce my dentist's and it took a while to get my friend's right. (Has a distinct shortage of vowels)