Monday 23 May 2011

Nicholson's or Pearson's

There appears to be two main players in the canal guide game.  When we did our hire in 2007 we bought both guides for the Grand Union Canal - Nicholson and Pearson.  The Nicholson guide seemed to be more comprehensive and had much more detailed maps of the towns and their streets.  The descriptions and explanations were great.  But, we found the little Pearson book easier to read the map at a glance.  It's larger and the icons for services etc were larger too.  We especially noticed this as the weather was very sunny and with the booklet perched on the roof the larger map was easier to look at than the smaller print on the Nicholson.

I'm itching to order more of them so we can read about all the different places but there may well be updates by the time we get there and we'd rather have the most recent when the time comes to go cruising.  So I guess we'll just have to keep looking at the ones we have.  Hmmm.. might be worth a look on Ebay.  Maybe someone is selling off their old editions.

We'd love to know your opinions on these guides.  Which do you prefer and why?

3 comments:

Carol said...

Nicholsons every time with north at the top of the page.

Elly and Mick said...

Thanks Carol, that is a definite plus. Maybe I should have a pro's and con's list! Elly

Christine at www.richlow.co.uk said...

Why just a choice of those two? You might like to take a look at Richlow guides, our patch is north-eastern England and Lincolnshire, which Pearson's don't even cover. We are waterways enthusiasts and our guides are "Written by People Who Go There!" We update our guides all the time, and there's a free updates blog to keep them so after purchase. You might like to have a look at our Introduction to the waterways of our area http://issuu.com/richlow/docs/intro
See what you think. Christine