About a week ago or so, Emma was surprised to notice that Google Maps is incapable of calculating a route from Manchester to Buxton. It works if you type in a place within Buxton, and also if you choose to calculate a walking route.

Next, looking at the live traffic on Google Maps, I noticed the region of slow traffic seemed to be concentrated in a band across the middle of the country. When I checked the weather map on the BBC, it looked like this is where all the snow has been.

Click on the thumbnail to view the image

I recently started reading the book Company of Liars by Karen Maitland. It is set during the 14th century, as the plague was sweeping across England. There is a map in the front of the book with some of the towns featured in the book. I decided to use Google Maps to find them and see what they look like today.

The first town is Kilmington in Devon. I noticed a strange place nearby called 'No Name':

There appear to be some strange place names in Shropshire. I noticed these while checking the route to Ironbridge.