Photos copyright
Dick Clark, Mayhem Photographics www.mayhemphotographics.co.uk
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Event Location: Online Maps
To help you find Rockingham Castle, we have carefully researched the various mapping services available online (and in some cases, clawed our way into the code behind them to make this easier for you). We have listed them here in the order which we like them, remember that most of these maps will get you near to Rockingham Castle but once there, please follow the Event signposting into the showground, we don't want you ending up in a field full of cows because your web browser has done something strange. Click on the underlined Mapping engine name and (in theory) a new window will open onto the Map site. If it doesn't work - and this is not cross-platform guaranteed, the root address of the site is listed as well. You are encouraged to try them all out, we would be delighted to know your opinions about these sites too. As it is often said - your mileage may vary...
Destination:
Rockingham Castle,
Rockingham, Market Harborough,
Leicestershire LE16 8TH
STREETMAP.CO.UK®
We like Streetmap and use it regularly to find venues all over the country. Quick and easy to use, the map centre is simple to navigate around on. The LARGE MAP button and zoom controls could be better placed but that is just a quibble.
Very handy for print outs, the Printer friendly page is straight to A4 size without any fuss. Excellent, does what it says on the box, put it on your Bookmark list today.
http://www.streetmap.co.uk
THE AA.COM®
The AA offer a super mapping and direction service. Hit the Route Planner and feed in your home post code, the Rockingham Castle post code LE16 8TH
and it will give you a printable direction list in point to point format. Very handy to have as it (optionally) lists fuel stations, Travelodge motels and - for those of us with "Heavy Feet" - locations of Speed Safety Cameras.
Click AA Roadwatch for a very good travel information service. An excellent, feature rich website once you find your way round it, well worth troughing through their links and
pages. Bookmark it.
http://www.theaa.com
MULTIMAP.com®
Based on Ordnance Survey maps (see next site in list), this is a delightful and easy to use site, with the added bonus of the option of an aerial picture! Relevant and not "in your face" advertising, and simple map interface.
A charming, co-operative and well designed website.
http://www.multimap.com
ORDNANCE SURVEY.co.uk®
Warning: Whilst we love the dear old Ordnance Survey, they have a bizarre website. The above link is probably not MAC® useable and the map tries to open in a separate window with all toolbars and menu options missing. Firefox®
users (yea!) should right-click the link and force it to open in a new tab. Microsoft® Internet Exploder users are shafted as usual, get Firefox instead and discover how the web should work as it is told to. That
said, once you have pinned it down squealing, the OS map reproduces cleanly, zoom and pan controls are easy to use and understand. Printing it is not so straight forward but what the OS would rather you did is buy the map on paper.
What we do recommend is visiting their pages on Historical Mapping which will interest and delight anyone with an interest in their
local and national history, lots of useful information, maps to buy, etc., worth a serious read.
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk
GOOGLE.com®
Google maps are not ideal for route finding but are a decent overview. The satellite photos of Rockingham Castle are beautiful and are so detailed you can make out the individual trees and building features. They cannot be far off from
the Cold War spy satellite pictures, don't know about being able to make out the brand of cigarette, but you can see the sheep smoking it!
http://maps.google.co.uk
YAHOO.COM®
The above link is (judging from the code) optimized for Broadband use and is linked to the main Yahoo map site. If this doesn't work for you try the yahoo.net address below. Feed in the start and finish post codes and it lands you
on a rather unfriendly Java applet, which is slow even over Broadband on a fast machine. Incautious waving of the mouse cursor over the side advertisment causes the map to disappear completely. A Multimap look alike, without the charm and without The AA
direction list either. Hopefully, this is a beta site and will improve given time, it does not have much to recommend it at the moment.
http://maps.yahoo.net
Online Traffic Reporting
Apart from the AA - here are a couple of sites providing live traffic reports, the first of which - Frixo - also features a WAP mobile phone interface.
FRIXO
Frixo is a traffic reporting site giving up to date information about road conditions, updating every 3 minutes via feeds from various sources. We like FRIXO. A trim, functional site, fast and easy to navigate. Best of all it has
a WAP interface for accessing it on the move from your mobile phone. Jolly handy for those of us who have not yet forked out for a SatNav. Select from the Region, the East Midlands map, Corby is nearly centre on this map and the map is easy to re-position. This is certainly a site to add to Favourites, does everything it says on the box.
http://www.frixo.com
TRAFFIC ENGLAND®
By way of a contrast, there is the offical Highways Agency website. The traffic reporting is far more detailed, but holdups due to roadworks are not shown by default, which is annoying as these are the most common cause of delays to your journey. Parts
of this website are depressingly slow to load even over broadband, probably due to server load. Frixo certainly has the edge on speed and is noticeably more responsive.
http://www.trafficengland.com