That certainly does not apply to the UK. Our OS (Ordnance Survey) maps are absolutely fantastic and you can get GPS devices which include this mapping.

I agree about some other places though. I went on holiday to the Greek island of Corfu and tried to buy a good map but all I could find was the same crappy map in every shop.

One day, I hired a bike and went off exploring and stopped off in a village which had a few tourist shops. I bought a bottle of the local olive oil from one shop and as I left, the owner of the shop next door started hassling me to buy something from his. His English wasn't great and I don't speak Greek so communicating with him wasn't easy.

I tried to explain that I wanted a good map - he had very good map, come buy it ... Next minute he is waving yet another copy of the crappy map at me! I said it was no good. No, it very good map. I was cracking up ... I led him out of the shop and pointed at the road, then the map and asked him to show me that road on the map. He couldn't - it wasn't marked on it. I then said, okay, forget the road, show me his village on the map - that wasn't marked on it either, despite the settlement clearly being many hundreds of years old!

He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, tossed the map to one side and asked me if I wanted to buy a jar of his honey instead!