Olden Life - What were AA route maps? By Sharon Griffiths

It was the first excitement of holiday – when the route map came from the AA or RAC. The promise of exotic journeys through unknown territory – but with someone to guide you all the way. Before satnavs and Google maps, there was the personalised route. You wrote to the motoring organisations telling them where you were going, and they would send you a personalised strip map, duplicated, stapled and – in the case of the RAC – written in incredibly faint blue ink. Which is probably why my dad deserted them for the AA. More legible. Those were the days when motoring was still an adventure, when main roads still went straight through towns and you devised your own regular stops which became part of the holiday tradition – heading north always meant fish and chips in Thirsk; Wales was tea and Welsh cakes in Bala. And, of course...

I’m afraid this isn’t one of our four free articles available in full, which are set out in the first two rows of the ‘Magazine’ page.
Please click here to find them.

To buy a digital version of this issue for just £2.99, click here