By: Blonde Two

As you know, we Blondes love tents. Between us we have a fair few ranging from 1-Blonde to 6-Blonde with all the possible permutations in between. We have pitched our many tents in bogs, in snow, on hills, in valleys and in the lounge to dry them.

It is easy to explain why we love these flimsy shelters; tents represent adventure. With a tent you can sleep anywhere you want to (well nearly), travel light (well not always) and wake up to views that you just don’t get from the bedroom window (or maybe no views at all).

Just imagine then, the adventure that was contained within the magnificent Ordnance Survey dome, which was our home base at Countryfile Live this weekend. There were maps, compasses, maps on towels, maps on chair, dogs on maps on chairs, maps on t-shirts and (rather impressively) maps in 3D on a giant high definition screen.

There were also a lot of people.

People are strange and varied creatures but at Countryfile Live 2017 they were all lovely and, maybe more importantly, they were like-minded lovers of the outdoors. The team from Ordnance Survey were, of course, great and we had a great time chatting and laughing with them and learned loads about Ordnance Survey, their maps and their fabulous OS Maps app (if you haven’t tried it yet you really should).

Our fellow Ordnance Survey Champions were amazing, we are such a diverse bunch that there is always a story to be told and a laugh to be had.

It was the public, however, that maybe surprised us. We both agreed that we had never met such a friendly and interesting set of people. We chatted to people who wanted to use OS Maps for agriculture, we talked to teachers who wanted to use it in the classroom, we gave advice on all sorts of outdoor activity, we gave compass demonstrations and we learned a few things ourselves.

I have no idea how many people came through the Ordnance Survey dome over the 4 days of Countryfile Live 2017 but there are two things that I can tell you for sure:

1. There are plenty of people across the UK who treasure their collections of Ordnance Survey maps.

2. The future of our great British tradition of mapping is safe in the hands of some very talented and passionate people.