1. Eat breakfast before you go into the park. We found having a good, hearty breakfast before going into the park gave us energy to last until the afternoon, so while most people were in having their lunch, we were enjoying the rides!
2. Take bottles of water in with you. It is so important for adults and kids to keep hydrated in the heat but it can be expensive buying water in the parks. We bought a small cool bag from Wal-Mart, popped in an ice pack and we had cool water all day long, and we did not have to pay park prices.
3. You are not going to see everything in one visit, so don't even try. The Disney parks are massive, usually busy and usually hot so you will not make it round the whole park, seeing everything you want to see in one day. Make a list of what you want to see and find it on the map. Then you won't waste time wondering where things are.
4. Hire a stroller for the kids. Not just for the babies or toddlers either. This year, we had a 9 year old and a six year old in the double stroller (just don't tell their friends!). It was blisteringly hot and they were tired and grumpy. So we hired the stroller, gave them an ice-cream and they got to cool down and watch the park go by for while. It saved a whole lot of tension and stress and we were all happier for it.
5. Get the kids involved before you visit the parks. There is lots of information about the parks and the kids can plan what rides they want to go on, what characters they want to meet and what shows they want to see. That way, they can see in advance what rides are not appropriate for their age/height and no tantrums in the line for the ride itself. It's also great for a long plane ride to get the older kids to sit with their Disney maps and plan it all out. Keeps them busy and passes the time.

Years later, although hardly as well-travelled as Lord Mountbatten, I have my own treasured collection of atlases, maps and guides. All of them bring back memories, whether I've actually visited the places covered or not. Lord Louis' words, coupled with the maps of every kind and wealth of information that followed (how many 12 year-olds know that Nottingham means "estate of Snot"s people', or that the late, lamented Clackmannanshire had an area of 34,938 acres?), had begun a love affair with the cartographer's art which has grown stronger with time.

Perversely, perhaps, I gave up geography after two years at secondary school - there simply wasn't enough map work for my liking. As if to compensate, I now discovered the wonders of bus and train timetables. Give me The Atlas and the Midland Red Buses Complete Timetable, and I was in heaven. My mind's eye would follow the progress of double-deckers to all parts of central England, living out their journeys to Malvern Wells, Church Stretton, Norton-juxta-Twycross.... all this, of course, had to be kept from my family and friends or I'd have been subjected to some only-too-imaginable horrors:

“Well, Paul, I've come to the conclusion that you're suffering from Tabulated Information Obsession Syndrome, or, as we psychiatrists call it, madness.”

A couple of years later I took on a paper round to earn enough money for my first bicycle. My fellow paper-boy and best pal Gary had done the same thing - we both felt really cool as we paraded our gleaming new machines around the housing estates. Discontent soon began to set in, however, with the realisation that we never really went anywhere. The only actual journeys we seemed to make were from home to the paper shop.... to do the job.... to earn the money.... to pay for the bikes.... to get to the paper shop. I often wonder today, how many people are caught in a similar behavioural loop with their cars.

The Big Moment came with the discovery of the one-inch Ordnance Survey map. A whole new world opened up, with a previously undreamed-of capacity for detail on a sheet which fitted neatly into a pocket. The Birmingham A to Z, a mainstay of my life for years, was to a larger scale but could not compare with this. Thirty seconds after opening sheet 131 we'd learned that the railway which terminated at the Longbridge car factory had once continued to Halesowen, and that magnetic north was then 8½ degrees west of grid north. Not a lot of people knew that. Or, I would now concede, cared.

So we began to explore the locality and beyond. Perhaps the major appeal of a large-scale map to those fresh-faced young boys was its reliability - there really was an enormous reservoir beyond the next hill, and those woods ahead really did contain both deciduous trees and conifers. I later found that this "comfort factor" is not confined to terrestrial travel. One of my fondest memories of the Apollo moon landings is of an astronaut exulting, “Hey - look at that crater coming up, right where it's supposed to be!” Boy, could I relate to that!

Then, in 1974, the 1:50,000 series came along. Initial resentment of yet another aspect of life going metric soon gave way to a grudging appreciation of the improvement in clarity and detail. All right, so the contours - the lines showing height above sea level, from which an idea of the shape and steepness of hills and valleys can be gained - did look odd. The old 50-foot ones had simply been converted to the nearest metre, resulting in convenient heights like 213, 381 and 533m. And no longer were both deciduous and coniferous trees shown. But overall, it was a change for the better. An idea came to me. The Large Scale Map As Art.

I was making a coffee table at night school, using solid mahogany (sorry, rain forests - if only I'd known). One day I was browsing through the atlas collection when I suddenly noticed that the Island of Arran is coffee table shaped. A flat version of sheet 69 was soon on its way from the Ordnance Survey's head office in Southampton, and as the ravages of the Post Office's Bending Department (Cylindrical Packages Marked "Do Not Bend" Section) weren't too serious, it formed a colourful adornment to said table. I patiently endured the inevitable comments about it being an interesting idea for a picnic table but wasn't it a bit heavy to take all the way to Arran?

It should be added that this island is one of the places I have yet to visit. The sight of it in the atlas had unleashed a childhood memory - a treasure hunt in a dimly-recalled comic, featuring Lady Penelope of Thunderbirds fame. (All these titled folk..... thankfully, an appreciation of maps is all I have in common with the upper classes!) I forget whether Her Ladyship found the treasure - I must have missed the final episode - but she and Parker had a lot of fun looking for it.

By now I had gained a wife, who alas merited the description "long-suffering" before our first anniversary. Every country walk we embarked upon seemed to be in areas where recent rainfall had broken all records, on one occasion producing the bitter comment “Your precious maps show everything but the mud.”

Needless to say, she does not share my enthusiasm for the map makers and all their works. Neither do our three children, despite my efforts at giving them a proper education. Fortunately they all appreciate the countryside to some extent, and we often go exploring. The whole family has to admit that, with the help of the appropriate maps (without which I nowadays have severe palpitations when going almost anywhere), we've found some pretty interesting - and uncrowded - places to visit.

Because the greatest appeal maps have to me is the insight they give. Thanks to them, we've enjoyed places which no-one equipped only with a road atlas would even know existed. For us, the ultimate example of this is the beach at Talisker Bay, Isle of Skye.

Atlases show an extremely minor road ending well short of the coast - apparently not worth a second glance. A map to a respectable scale, however, reveals to the west a small river plain enclosed to the north, south and east by dramatic slopes, with a waterfall descending a cliff and a beach facing the Western Isles. An easy 15-minute walk from your car or bike and you've found Paradise (weather permitting, as always in Skye.) If you visit Talisker Bay and are lucky enough to be rewarded with a classic Hebridean sunset, you will, like us, bless the world's cartographers for the rest of your days.