Welcome to my blog.
My name is Joe Makepeace, born in Lytham St Annes in 1971 and apart from my first seven days of life at St Annes War Memorial Hospital, have lived exclusively in either Marton, Blackpool or latterly, South Shore, Blackpool
I have been married since 1992 (I know) and have one grown up son who was delivered to us by Stork (Ciconia ciconia) in 1997.
For as long as I can remember I have had my head buried in a book or if I was outdoors, will have been fascinated by all things to do with nature and the natural world.
The majority of the books I read has titles ‘Fact Finder’, ‘3000 Questions And Answers’, ‘Explaining the Unexplained’, ‘Collins Concise Dictionary’ and whole sets of books on Fishing (Coarse, Fly and Sea), SAS Survival, Observer Series and many, many more.
I was therefore an easy to child to buy presents for on birthdays and Christmas and still recall being admonished on my way home from my Grandparents at Christmas when my Mum asked me if I liked my present (it was the hardback version of Chris Bonnington’s ‘Quest for Adventure’) and replying to her “I’m not sure, I’ve not read it yet” – To this day I’m still not sure why I got told off!!
However, for all of the fascination with books, my real passion was and remains maps – any map, any size, any location, any scale and any age. Maps will tell you anything you want (and probably need) to know. I used to love drawing countries from memory, looking at features, studying atlases and the data sections – capital cities, deepest oceans, highest mountains, rivers and their deltas, borders between countries, populations, languages spoken, lakes and islands, lakes on islands…. – I did and still do find it simply fascinating and can spend hours poring over a good map.
I also have to say that some of my most well used digital phone / desktop apps are the OS Mapping Tool and Google Maps – Progress old chap!!
