GordisWell, guys, I have had a good look at the sources (the Hobbit and the LOTR with HOME 6-8) and I must admit that I found no data on the position of Imladris. It may be North or South of the road from the Ford to the High Pass, or straight on it.
The maps I found show it North, though...
www.radiorivendell.com/index.php?page=about
What do you think?
Now about this bent of the Road, where it runs almost North along the Bruinen. Here is this very-very long Quote from HOME 6:
QUOTE
Note on the course of the Road between Weathertop and Rivendell
This was an element in the geography to which my father made various
alterations in the Revised Edition of?he Lord of the Rings (1966). I set
out first three passages from the chapter 'Flight to the Ford' for
comparison.
(1) Page 212.
Original text:
(the original text has no passage corresponding)
First Edition: 'That is Loudwater, the Bruinen of Rivendell,'
answered Strider. 'The Road runs along it for many leagues to
the Ford.'
Second Edition: 'That is Loudwater, the Bruinen of Rivendell,'
answered Strider. 'The Road runs along the edge of the hills for
many miles from the Bridge to the Ford of Bruinen.'
(2) Page 214.
Original text: The hills now shut them in. The Road looped away
southward, towards the river; but both were now lost to view.
First Edition: The hills now began to shut them in. The Road bent
back again southward towards the River, but both were now
hidden from view.
Second Edition: The hills now began to shut them in. The Road
behind held on its way to the River Bruinen, but both were now
hidden from view.
(3) Page 200.
Original text (p. 194): Eventually they came out upon the top of a
high bank above the Road. This was now beginning to bend
rather away from the river, and clung to the feet of the hills,
some way up the side of the narrow valley at the bottom of
which the river ran.
First Edition: After a few miles they came out on the top of a high
bank above the Road. At this point the Road had turned away
from the river down in its narrow valley, and now clung close
to the feet of the hills, rolling and winding northward among
woods and heather-covered slopes towards the Ford and the
Mountains.
Second Edition: After a few miles they came out on the top of a high
bank above the Road. At this point the Road had left the
Hoarwell far behind in its narrow valley, and now clung close
to the feet of the hills, rolling and winding eastward among
woods (etc.)
Taking first citation (2), from small-scale and large-scale maps made
by my father there is no question that the Road after passing south of
Weathertop made first a great swing or loop to the North-east: cf. FR
p. 211 - when they left Weathertop it was Strider's plan 'to shorten their
journey by cutting across another great loop of the Road: east beyond
Weathertop it changed its course and took a wide bend northwards.' This
goes back to the original text. The Road then made a great bend
southwards, round the feet of the Trollshaws, as stated in the original
text and in the First Edition in citation (2). All my father's maps show the
same course for the Road in respect of these two great curves. The two
sketches on p. 201 are redrawn from very rough large-scale maps which
he made (the second in particular is extremely hard to interpret owing to
the multiplicity of lines made as he pondered different configurations).
In 1943 I made an elaborate map in pencil and coloured chalks for The
Lord of the Rings, and a similar map of the Shire (see p. 107, item V).
These maps are referred to in Letters nos. 74 and 98 (pp. 86, 112). On my
LR map the course of the Road from Weathertop to the Ford is shown
exactly as on my father's maps, with the great northward and southward
swings. On the map that I made in 1954 (published in the first two
volumes of The Lard of the Rings), however, the Road has only a feeble
northward curve between Weathertop and the Hoarwell Bridge, and
then runs in a straight line to the Ford. This was obviously simply
carelessness due to haste on my part. My father doubtless observed it at
the time but felt that on so small a scale the error was not very grievous: in
any case the map was made, and it had been a matter of urgency. But I
think that this error was the reason for the change in the Second Edition
given in citation (2), from 'the Road bent back again southward towards
the River' to 'the Road behind held on its way to the River Bruinen'. my
father was making the discrepancy with the map less obvious. A similar
instance has been seen already in the change that he made in the Second
Edition in respect of the direction of Bucklebury Ferry from Woodhall,
p. 107. In his letter to Austin Olney of Houghton Mifflin, 28 July 1965
(an extract from which is given in Letters no. 274) he said: I have finally
decided, where this is possible and does not damage the story, to take the
maps as "correct" and adjust the narrative.'
Barbara Strachey (who apparently used the First Edition) deduced the
course of the Road very accurately in her atlas, Journeys of Frodo (1981),
map 13 'Weathertop and the Trollshaws'.
Citation (1) from the First Edition is perfectly illustrated in the
sketches on p. 201, which precisely show the Road running alongside the
Loud water 'for many leagues to the Ford.' My father made various small-
scale maps covering a greater or lesser part of the lands in The Lord of the
Rings, on three of which this region appears; and on two of these the
Road is shown approaching the Loudwater at a fairly acute angle, but by
no means running alongside it. On the third (the earliest) the Road runs
close to the river for a long distance before the Ford; and this is less
because the course of the Road is different than because on this map the
river flows at first (after the Ford) in a more westerly direction towards
the Hoarwell (as in the sketch-maps).* On my 1943 map (see above) this
is also and very markedly the case. On the published map, on the other
hand, the Road approaches the river at a wide angle; and this was
another error. It is clear, I think, that the changed Second Edition text in
citation (1), with 'runs along the edge of the hills' instead of 'runs along it
[the Loudwater]', was again made to save the appearance of the map.
Citation (3) in the First Edition seems to contradict (1): the Road runs
along the Loudwater for many leagues to the Ford (1), but when the
travellers came down to the Road out of the Trollshaws it had turned
away from the river (3). But it is probably less a contradiction than a
question of how closely 'runs along the Loudwater' is interpreted. The
second sketch-map seems clear at least to this extent, that it shows the
Road approaching the river, running alongside it for a stretch, and then bending somewhat away and 'clinging to the feet of the hills' before
returning to it at the Ford.
The changed reading of the Second Edition in (3) - made so as not to
alter the amount of text - makes the words 'narrow valley' refer to the
Hoarwell, and there is no longer any statement at this point about the
course of the Road in relation to the Loudwater. This was clearly another
accommodation to the published map (and is not an entirely happy
solution), as also was 'northward' (cf. Sketch II) to 'eastward'.
(* Barbara Strachey makes the Loudwater bend sharply west just below the
Ford and Row in this direction (before turning south) much further than on my
father's maps, so that the land between the Hoarwell and the Loudwater (called
'the Angle' in LR Appendix A, p. 320) ceases to be at all triangular. She makes
this assumption because from the high ground above the Last Bridge the
travellers could see not only the Hoarwell but also the Loud water, whereas going
by the published map the rivers 'would have been some 100 miles apart and the
hill [on which they stood] would have had to have been a high mountain for it
[the Loudwater] to have been visible.' By bringing this river so far to the west on
her map the distance from the hill above the Last Bridge to the nearest point of
the Loudwater is reduced to about 27 miles. On my father's maps the shortest
distance from the Bridge to the Loudwater varies between (approximately) 45
(on the earliest), 60, and 62 miles; on the published map it is about 75 miles.
Thus the objection that the Loudwater was too far away to be seen is real; but it
cannot be resolved in this way.)
