Sunday, May 17, 2009

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Frequently spotted around Cambridge: a gaggle of camera-toting tourists huddled over these kinda-cool relief maps of the city centre trying to work out how to get from where they are (in this case under Great St Mary's tower in the centre) to their favourite coffee shop. Astonishingly (the epidemically-omnipresent) Starbucks has not been ringed in dayglo-orange by the council on this map despite their best efforts in cookie-cutter-corporate-branding of the city centre. These relief maps are great reproductions though and very realistic - the most recognisable bits being King's College chapel top right and Trinity College Great Court (a la the race in Chariots of Fire, although the film actually used Eton College school) in the foreground. The only innacuracy as far as I can tell is that, unlike the actual city centre buildings, this isn't covered in pigeon s***.

Of course, the true beauty of this map is that, whilst any photoblogger can snap their city's best bits, only a really lazy one can give you the whole city centre, to scale, in one shot. Voila!