Warning: this is about cartography, bibliophilism, storytelling, crowdsourcing and self-publishing.
It should take about 30 minutes to drive from Liverpool to Argleton, out in the Lancashire countryside. A sprint up the A59, then a few hundred feet on Smithy Lane and Bold Lane. If you get to the Cockbeck Tavern in Aughton, you’ve gone a half mile too far. Turn around and go back.
But you will never arrive in Argleton; you will always go too far and have to retrace your route. In the end, you must face some difficult questions, the sort that invite a pint or few at the Cockbeck: Does a place exist if it’s on a map? Does it exist if it isn’t? Do mapmakers — the people we expect to faithfully illustrate our physical space — lie? And why do they?
Because Argleton doesn’t exist. Except on Google Maps.
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If Argleton doesn’t exist, why is it on the map?
It could be a mistake (which Google claims). Or it could be a "trap street." Commercial cartographers often insert a fake street (usually a minor alley or lane) or landmark (such as small pond in the middle of nowhere) to foil others from copying their maps — a sort of cartographic canary trap.
But I like a more romantic (or realistic) view: places on maps always have stories — places creep onto maps because they have a story.
Argleton does exist after all.. it’s on the map. You can walk there. You could, in a few minutes, take your pint from the Cockbeck, walk to the site of Argleton and… "be there"… even if it is not. As local Roy Bayfield put it:
"A colleague of mine spotted the anomaly on Google Maps, and I thought ‘I’ve got to go there’," he said.
"I started to weave this amazing fantasy about the place, an alternative universe, a Narnia-like world. I was really fascinated by the appearance of a non-existent place that the internet had the power to make real and give a semi-existence."
Suw’s mix of cartography and storytelling
Suw Charman-Andersen has picked up that idea and is writing — co-creating — a book: Argleton: a story of maps, maths and motorways. If you didn’t read the link.. go back. It is a book and a puzzle — a puzzle she wants people to help create and help solve. I will quote her briefly
"Books don’t just have to be books. They can be other things too. Like paper weights, monitor stands or cat toys. This book is not just a book, it’s a puzzle too. What kind of puzzle? Well, that would be telling.
"What I can say is that I need your help to make this puzzle truly puzzling. If you like geolocation, maths and photography, then this should be right up your alley.
"If you support this project, you will be sent an URL to which you can upload a photo of a landmark local to you, along with its exact location as a longitude and latitude. You can photograph whatever you like, wherever you like, so long as it’s a place rather than a person.
"I will then do stuff with that stuff and the resulting stuff will, via the magic of technology, be sent back to you as an important, intrinsic piece of the puzzle.
"The first person to successfully solve the puzzle will get a non-trivial prize that I’ll decide on soon. (After all, I don’t want to give away all the secrets up front!)"
Supporting the project means making a pledge through Kickstarter to help raise $2700 for publishing. Pledges of $60 or more get you a hardback copy of the book, signed and hand-bound by Suw, and lots of the behind-the-scenes updates. But you can make pledges as low as $3. Your pledge is binding only if the $2700 is pledged.
I am in. This is the intersection of a writer I like, cartography, imagination, crowdsourcing, bibliophilia, storytelling…..I look forward to nestling this book next to my 4th edition Andrees Handatlas (which makes no mention of Argleton).
