The moment I saw this guy on the foreshore in Amalfi I knew what he was up to – he was consulting Pocket Earth on his phone! This is how I knew:

I mentioned Pocket Earth in my last post. It is an app which is essentially a smart atlas in your pocket, indispensable for travellers. You can download maps to use offline, they are zoomable, and best of all, it uses gps to give you your position. It is based on the fantastic open source OpenStreetMap. It often marks things like public toilets, supermarkets, medical centres and post offices, and also has travel guides within the app. Michael is quite obsessed with maps and knowing his exact where-abouts, and while we have still collected numerous paper maps, the app means getting a map at every new destination isn’t a necessary first step, and neither is spending time trying to work out where you are. It’s quite transformative; Michael now refers to it The Wonderful Pocket Earth!

We find our way around very differently. I like to have the means of knowing where I am if I need to, and I like maps for their own sake, but I also really like to wander and follow my nose and get lost some of the time. Or to make a game of finding my way without a map. It seems more fun and I think it offers more chance of discovering things you might not otherwise.