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Tuffmap - London Streets Edition - Bob Pickett takes wet weather navigating into the capital

Tuffmap's London Atlas - once again, it does exactly what it says on the cover Like the Great Britain and Ireland edition , Tuffmap's London Streets Atlas is both waterproof and tearproof - ideal when you're going to be shoving this under saddles and in backpacks, as the robust nature of the book will cope with pretty much any amount of abuse.

So it'll take punishment (which you can't say about normal A-Zs), but what about usability? If you're looking for a small road, it'll do the job just fine. The scale used means that looking up roads is easy - again something you need when you're standing out in all weathers trying to find where you want to go. And if you are in central London, there is also a set of larger scale pages - if you have ever tried to negotiate the area around Soho or Lincoln's Inn Fields, you will know these are essential.

The book also contains a West End Theatre and Cinema map and a West End Shopping map - it is possible to park near to these areas (almost outside the door of one or two theatres), so a useful edition.

Detail is good, but I'd like it to cover a wider area There are downsides to this book though. At over an inch thick, there won't be a lot of space left under the saddle (in the case of my current SV650S, put this under there and leaving in the toolkit barely leaves room for my disc lock). Also, the Atlas covers the inner London area - for example, heading to the east, it just about touches the edge of Romford.

To make this a really useable Atlas, I would have liked to see it extend to the edge of the M25. Plenty of other London A-Zs do, but then they're not going to last more than a couple of seconds when the inevitable downpour happens just as you're trying to find where you went wrong.

It doesn't come cheap either - at £23.99 when I last looked, this is quite a lot more than other London A-Zs that cover the same area with a similar amount of detail. I understand from the manufacturer that they run special offers on this edition from time to time, so worth contacting them to ask.

Verdict:

If you have to head into London a lot and visit a wide area within the capital, then this is a useful product. I'd say this is ideal for Couriers and Despatch Riders - and if you're freelance, then you can claim the cost of this as a valid business expense when Mr Taxman comes to call!

For more information, visit the Tuffmap site

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