Summary (by AI): Worcestershire; Upton-upon-Severn; Medieval atmosphere; Imposing High Street buildings; Old-fashioned heraldry signs; River Severn marina; The Map Shop; 55,000 maps; Ordnance Survey historic series; Combine shop visit with town exploration;
Blog: I’ve noticed that the more I get into visiting these ABCs, the more I end up criss-crossing places I’ve been to before. It’s fairly obvious why—I can’t just do a linear, circular route of the country. And when I go to an area, I definitely don’t visit every single ABC because my process isn’t refined enough for that yet anyway.
So, I was looking for an emporium in Worcestershire and I came across The Map Shop. It looked good, so I put it down in my planned visit locations and didn’t think too much more of it. That is, until I decided to do a bit of preparation and realized I'd be in Upton-upon-Severn. The name sounded familiar.
I remembered that the last time I was in Worcester, I’d driven through it. It’s a really intriguing town. I hadn't particularly planned to go through it—it was just on the route to Worcester itself—but it felt very ancient, almost medieval.
The reason it feels so medieval is that it has these very imposing buildings along the High Street. On top of that, they’ve decided to hang signs outside almost every shop, like old-fashioned pub signs, featuring a lot of English heraldry and flags. It really makes you feel like you're walking through a medieval town. It's also right on the River Severn, with a lovely marina and a row of pubs. I actually stopped there the night before and had a lovely pint by the Severn—it was a beautiful day.
The shop itself is an interesting place, I have to say. I’m a bit of a map nerd myself. I love Google Maps, and I have loads of physical map books. I even went to see a map exhibition in a museum last year, and I spend a lot of time in places like Stanford’s in London.
The blurb for this place claimed it holds the biggest collection of maps in the country—something like 55,000 of them. When you're in the shop, that might not be immediately obvious because a lot of the space is taken up by travel guides and other books, rather than having all those maps out on display.
But what I really appreciated there was the Ordnance Survey's series of maps dedicated to historic Britain. They had a map of Ancient Britain, done in the classic OS style—folded in that way that's impossible to ever fold back to its former shape—and one of Roman Britain, which was also incredibly cool.
So yes, it was definitely worth a visit, especially when combined with exploring Upton-upon-Severn. I'm not sure I'd make the trip just for the shop unless you were hunting down a very specific map. Because let's face it, these days you can just use Google Maps or buy online. It's a shame—it's the death of the High Street, I know—but there we go.
The Map: