Publisher's Synopsis
PORTS & AIRPORTS is a compilation of 100 vertical aerial photographs of British docks and airports, taken from the Millennium Map.
Heathrow, the world's busiest passenger airport; St Mary's on the Scilly Isles, perhaps Britain's most exotic holiday destination; Duxford in Cambridgeshire, site of the RAF museum; St Ives, popular Cornish cultural centre and working fishing village; Dover, white cliffs and ferries to France; Skegness, Lincolnshire's famously bracing resort; Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, no longer quite next to the sea due to shifting sands; Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire container port; Stranraer, Ayrshire gateway to Northern Ireland. PORTS & AIRPORTS brings a surprising new angle to places such as these, and many more.
ABOUT THE MILLENNIUM MAP
Still being created, the Millennium Map is a fascinating venture. Inspired by the Domesday Book, Tristram Cary and Joe Studholme of Getmapping.com commissioned four specially equipped aircraft to fly the length and breadth of the country in strips - rather like a lawnmower - each one carrying state-of-the-art camera equipment valued at £250,000. These planes are systematically taking vertical photographs of the whole of the United Kingdom from an average height of 5,500 feet, recording every object right down to a minimum size of 25cm.
So far over 30km of nine-inch-wide film has been taken. After processing, each photograph is scanned at high resolution, subsequently undergoing a process known as geo-correction, which removes distortions caused by the tilt of the aircraft and the contours of the ground; the individual files are then colour-balanced and spliced together to form a single map-accurate 'mosaic' of the entire country.
In what must be the ultimate endorsement of its national significance, Her Majesty the Queen is a private investor in The Millennium Map; and when completed, the map will provide a snapshot of life in the year 2000 as historically important as William the Conqueror's survey of 1086.
