Thanks guys, but it really shows how far my handwriting has gone to hell in a handbasket over the years when I stopped using a pen and started using a keyboard.

At the moment, I'm writing the characters on paper with an italic nib, scanning them and then autotracting them into vector (so they look consitent / stay clear at high resolutions / easier to colour / edit etc) and reducing the size (which gets rid of some of the sins).

I want to get to the stage where I can print out an outline of the map, do all the lettering by hand (doesn't matter if I make a mistake, I can just do that bit again later), scan the whole lot in at once and drop it into place. I think it would be more fun.