Knob Hill. Birkhead. Shitterton. Pervin Road. Undy. Pant. Cockburn. Bushy Gap – these are all genuine British place names. And the list goes on, for long enough to suggest this country really ought to come with a parental advisory warning.
For centuries, not always well-intentioned people have been bequeathing places, streets, hills and valleys with highly inappropriate names, and it has long been an ambition of mine to celebrate this eccentric history with a ride linking places that draw titters, giggles and sniggers.
The idea was finally legitimised by the discovery of Strumpshaw, Tincleton and Giggleswick’s Marvellous Map of Great British Place Names.
This is, after all, a map sold by the straight-laced Ordnance Survey on its website…
ST&G is the creation of Humphrey Butler, a former City worker who made the unlikely leap from the world of high finance to become the country’s naughtiest cartographer.
For the last four years, he’s been making maps that shine a light on Britain’s (and the world’s) funny, rude and quirky place names, with maps including the Magnificently Rude Map of World Place Names and the Rather Cheeky Map of Great British Bottoms.
Po-faced marketeers told him Strumpshaw, Tincleton and Giggleswick was a name doomed to failure, but quite the opposite was true.
He’s selling to over 40 countries worldwide, partnered with Comic Relief for a special map in 2015, had a mention on Radio 4’s Today programme and, perhaps, best of all, received a very complimentary letter from the granddaddy of travel writing, Bill Bryson, thanking him for his “brilliant and classy map… Interviewers are forever asking me where Little Dribbling is. I shall mention your map as the best place to look for it.”
Despite the Australian map doing down well Down Under, Britain is where Humphrey’s sales are best – not just because it’s a British company with a predominant collection of British maps but because it suits our humour.
Seeing double
“I’m no social scientist,” says Humphrey, “but we seem to enjoy self-deprecation and innuendo more than most cultures. Just look at all the newspaper headlines – you’re only a mouse click away from a double entendre.”
The names of ST&G are all genuine British places. Humphrey wanted to affect the amusing trio of names that you might find from stuffy solicitors.
Until recently he was based in Bath and it’s his aim to register ST&G in a suitably amusing location. Such as Twatt, on Orkney – his all-time favourite place name.
“It comes from the old Norse meaning ‘clearing with a dwelling’ – a heady mix of humour, history, language and adventure in just five letters. For me, it has to be Twatt. But let’s not over-analyse that…”
When we caught up with him in early April he was set to embark on a six-month tour of Britain, a working holiday that’ll help in the making of future maps, while simultaneously launching a more serious product.
“It may be the first one we’ve made that actually has a use,” says Humphrey of the Great British Adventure Map, a new map for outdoor enthusiasts that might disappoint the 12-year-old in you who finds the ruder maps hilarious.
Fortunately for us, Humphrey is also a keen cyclist and was up for joining me on our very own rude ride.
We headed to Dorset, on his suggestion: it was close to us both (I was in Bristol, he’s temporarily lodging at his parents in Devon while he prepared for his tour), and the county possesses the sort of dichotomy we needed when it came to both bucolic countryside and a potty-mouthed enthusiasm for place nomenclature.
As a bonus, it took us close to one of the totally silent partners in ST&G, Tincleton.
Our route was a 111km loop from Weymouth – not rude or humorous in the slightest but with agreeable public transport connections and a proximity to the sea that means you’re rarely more than 200 yards from a purveyor of battered cod.
From there it would take us through both the sublime (Dorset AONB, Purbeck Heritage Coast) and the ridiculous (Shitterton, Piddle), with rarely anything less than terrific road-cycling tarmac in between.
Despite Humphrey being in the mapping business, I was in charge of route planning, sending the GPX file to him earlier in the week.
Initially, he was at a loss as to what to do with it. “A ludicrous thing for a cartographer to say,” he would later admit.
Bottoms up
First up in our voyage of vulgarity was a valley just west of Chickerell, Knights in the Bottom.
Britain has many bottoms (it means valley) and not least Dorset, which counts the bottoms Charity, Burnt, Well, Happy and (my favourite) Scratchy within its boundary.
Through the AONB, there was a disappointing lack of the place names we were searching for, although we could at least amuse ourselves with lamppost-mounted flyers for the Dorset Knob Throwing Festival later that month.
It was a Sunday dedicated to knobs. Knob Eating, Knob Painting, a Knob & Spoon Race, Guess the weight of the Big Knob, Knob Darts and a Knob Pyramid. Quiet at the back! The Dorset knob is nothing more than a savoury biscuit.
They’re tasty too, as tasty as the terrain in the area north of Abbotsbury.
This includes the wretched climb of Bishop’s Road, which offers glorious views of the Isle of Portland and the ocean below, but had me yelling all manner of unrepeatable language.
Amid much rolling terrain, we made a detour via Cerne Abbas, to check out its eponymous Giant.
It was an essential detour too, even if, from the viewing platform, you can’t quite see him in all his glory.
Not so the military aircraft bypassing overhead – not, apparently, as a training exercise but so they could gawp at the 55m-high chalk club-wielding gent in his birthday suit.
Nobody is quite sure when it was built, although a popular view is it’s political satire from the 17th century.
Couples struggling to conceive have been known to visit the Giant, with folklore saying that having sex on the Giant’s anatomy is a solution to infertility.
Eyes drawn to the well-endowed chap with our pair of Trek bikes leaning up against our bench, we admonished each other for missing the trick of riding the Giant/Wilier combo.
As the cloud shifted, the sky was as blue as the ride. We pressed on to the piddles of Piddletrenthide and Piddlehinton beside the River Piddle and the even more delightfully named Piddle Inn.
The lanes were almost uniformly superb, separated by bits of gnarly A- or busy B-road.
What's in a name?
On to Shitterton, a charming hamlet on the west side of Bere Regis utterly at odds with its name. Its name dates back at least 1,000 years and means, approximately, ‘farmstead on the stream used as an open sewer’.
In 2012, it fended off stiff competition from nearby Scratchy Bottom and Crapstone to come out ‘on top’ in a survey by genealogy website Find My Past to discover Britain’s most unfortunate place names.
Since 2010 it’s been signposted by a ginormous slab of rock, which replaced an oft-pilfered metal sign that through the years became Shitterton’s must-have souvenir.
“Every two or three years somebody comes along and nicks our sign because, clearly, Shitterton is amusing,” villager Ian Ventham told the BBC at the time.
Rather than doom yet another replacement to being looted, they had a “whip-round and bought this wonderful piece of Purbeck stone, which, at a tonne-and-a-half, is going to be slightly more difficult to take away”.
We settled for a photo with the slab and got on our way before anybody got suspicious.
For Humphrey, it was a satisfying first visit to one of his favourite place names, one of several that sound like the “ultimate character assassination”, such as Loose, Idle, Ugley, Dull, Petty and Seething.
After being spoiled thus far by glorious back roads, it was necessary to head down a stretch of hectic B-road in the direction of Shaggs, which turned out to be nothing more than a raunchily dubbed cottage.
In East Lulworth, we stopped at a bakery to replenish our energy stores with a bag of Dorset knob, before kicking on for the final push into the Purbeck Heritage Coast.
Regrettably, we were stopped in our (gravel) tracks for our planned visit to Scratchy Bottom, with the rough roads demanding more knobbily tyres than we’d arrived with.
No direct road runs through this hilly coastal region, which meant we had to zigzag our way through it, a prolonged but essential diversion to avert the worst of the horrors of the A353.
These are the sorts of roads that Humphrey is at home on. There’s a serious lack of seriousness, for want of a better phrase, to his cycling – the classical touring cyclist who basks in the great outdoors and gets his satisfaction from simply being in the saddle.
For a man who makes a living out of this country’s way with a place name, it’s no surprise to hear that one of his favourite cycling books tells the story of two men’s Land’s End to John o’Groats trek that started without bikes, money and even clothes, save for a couple of pairs of Union Jack boxer shorts. Rude riding at its finest.
In Free Country, George Mahood reveals how they relied on the generosity of the British public for everything from food to accommodation, clothes to shoes, and bikes to beer.
It’s been a similar sort of ride today, even if it required none of the begging, stealing and borrowing.
It was still two blokes on bikes, powered by a peculiarly British brand of humour.
Local knowledge
Distance: 111km
Grade: Medium. There’s rarely anything that you would call flat, but aside from a couple of leg stingers in the first half, there’s nothing an accommodating choice of gear ratios won’t see you through.
Download the full route: MapMyRide - Dorset Rude Ride
Getting there: If you’re coming by public transport, Weymouth train station is your best bet.
Where to stay: We stayed at the Florian Guest House in Weymouth, which is just a five-minute walk to the seafront. Owner Sue Pitman is a welcoming host of cyclists, with secure storage, free parking and the meanest English breakfast in town.
Food and drink: Mid-ride, we ate at the Drax Arms in Bere Regis, a traditional pub with quality food and a beer garden.
ST&G: To find out more about Humphrey’s maps, visit Marvellous Maps.
Tourist info: Visit Dorset.
