Well, the train ticket website thetrainline.com has a feature "Find the nearest station". Enter "Minehead" and you might expect to see the well-known and very much alive Minehead Station, the seaside terminus of the West Somerset Railway. Or even Taunton, perhaps. Not so, you get a map with a "You are here" flag stuck in Minehead and "Station" symbols at the South Wales towns of Llantwit Major and Rhoose, both across the Bristol Channel. Yes, nearest as the seagull flies but, heck, what a pathetic example of how not to use geographic information. Oh, I've just realised it's a Google Maps function, isn't it, so it's just another example of how poor these "maps" actually are. One day someone will lose their lives by relying on such trash. OK, OK. They do serve a purpose as a general locational tool at the smaller scales (that's the road atlas scales, not the detailed scale, folks). But using the data for intelligent queries - well, I ask you! And just how is the user of thetrainline.com website supposed to get from Llantwit Major to Minehead? Catch a train of course - probably back the way you came. It's rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. Come on thetrainline.com - wake up!
