The UK Pub Map

You can create a recognizable map of the Unites States by mapping only the country's rivers. If you want a recognizable map of Japan you could plot all the country's roads. If you want a recognizable atlas of the world then you can restrict yourself to mapping just the world's railways. However, if you want a recognizable map of Great Britain and Ireland, then you need pubs.

That's right - it's possible to create a recognizable map of the UK just by plotting all of the country's pubs. Drawing a Map from Pub Locations with the Matplotlib Basemap Toolkit is a nice tutorial on how to plot OpenStreetMap derived data with Matplotlib - but forget Mapplotlib we're here for the beer.

There are roughly 29,000 pubs in Great Britain and Ireland on OpenStreetMap. The result of plotting only these pubs and no other map data is an easily identifiable map of Great Britain and Ireland. It also seems to closely resemble a population density map of Great Britain and Ireland.