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A Mountaineer, Author, Traveller and Photographer explains why he wants a World of Metric Simplicity
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Hamish Brown
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Where but in muddle-along Britain would we have the situation where
walkers and climbers come off the hill on which they've used metric maps
all day - and jump into cars to follow mile signs to the local pub?
I'm old enough to have suffered the schoolboy miseries of learning the
old imperial weights and measures and even pounds, shillings and pence.
It only took a few trips abroad to realise the cumbersome nature of all
this so I was delighted when our maps went metric. I didn't have to swop
systems every few months. But we seem to have fallen asleep between map
and reality. The kilometre grid has been with us even before that,
which makes judging distances in kilometres easy on the map yet books,
newspapers, all manner of bumph and, above all else - to bamboozle most
of the world - all our road signs are given in miles. Have we ever been
given a reason by any of the governments over the last thirty years why
they drew back at this last, logical, even simple, piece of metrication?
As an instructor, teaching navigation is made ridiculous for my beginners.
Kids are schooled in metrics and then faced with a world of different
measurements on the roadside or in shops. We have outdoor folk thinking
in metres for heights yet having miles forced on them
for distances. Other countries find this laughable; I find it embarrassing.
What is education for but to equip kids for the practicalities of life
yet they are having to unlearn metrics once out of school. Makes government
not laughable but incompetent and illogical. But we know that anyway!
As a writer I am constantly having to waste time converting figures,
as a trainer I'm all too aware of the possibility for error in outdoor
activities. Not only efficiency but safety would be enhanced by completing
this long-running muddle.
Climbing peaks in Switzerland, shopping in the souks of Morocco
for expedition food, swotting logistics for travel in the Arctic, working
in my darkroom, reading (and writing) guidebooks - I'm in a world of
metric simplicity. Isn't it time the government came into the new millennium
and joined the real world? They would actually gain Brownie points if
they did besides making for a safer world.
Hamish Brown MBE, D.Litt., FRSGS is a well-known and respected mountaineer,
author, lecturer and photographer who has led expeditions all over
the metric world in a lifetime of climbing metric mountains.
The one kilometre grid system
was introduced to Ordnance Survey maps in 1940. Its National Grid system
is a key feature for safe route finding.