To wonder how people found unfamiliar places before Sat Navs

[Eastie77Returns]

Obviously IABU as I’m in my mid 40s and didn’t use a Sat Nav when I started driving but I can’t remember how I managed!

Things that puzzle me…if you were driving to another city, clearly maps and signs on the motorway would be used. But once you arrived in the city and then had to get to a specific address (not a well known attraction that would be clearly sign posted), how would you find it if you didn’t have a detailed map like an A to Z of the city. Presumably people wouldn’t go to the expense of buying those kinds of maps every time they visited an unfamiliar city. And yes you can stop and ask people but how would that have worked in large cities where a passerby is very unlikely to know how to get to 23 Random Street which could be anywhere from close to the city centre to miles away in the suburbs.

I had too much coffee today and can’t sleep so I’m awake ruminating over the little things in life that puzzle me😂

Everywhere was punctuated by pubs.
I'm on x street its 3rd right past the golden lion pub on x street.
A road atlas, I still have one, but it only shows bigger places, hamlets aren't on it and there is no blown up maps of main cities in the back.
A to z, i still have my city, Birmingham and London a to z books. The London one is spiral bound.
Phone when you get to usually a pub and get the extra details.
Ask people, people do still ask me although not as often.

And I used to be able to remember several turns ahead and roughly how many miles I had to be on motorway. That was sensible to not keep stopping to look. That skill is well gone now.

I started driving in the early 90s which is just a few years before you and AA autoroute.

Roads were just as complicated. 🤣

Roads were definitely just as complicated pre sat nav, probably more so if a town didn't have a bypass and you had to drive through it1

I started supply teaching in a county that I'd only just moved to in the early 2000s before Tom Toms etc really caught on.

I'd get the phone call, look the school up in the A-Z write a bullet point list of instructions for easy reference and hope that I didn't stray from them.
So many schools are hidden in undistinctive areas.
There'd be a fair bit of pulling over to check in the last mile once I was in the right area.

I know my county very well.
The long term benefit is if a road is diverted and sat nav keeps trying to drag you back into that area.

For international journeys you could get the AA to do you the route and post it to you. My parents drove down to visit me when I was overseas for a year in the early 90s and had a printed out route from their house in the UK right down to the city I was living in near the Swiss border.

I wrote to them with detailed step by step instructions to where I was actually living from the main road they arrived to my town on (pre-email era).

Like another poster I used to drive a lot for my role and had a road atlas and then generally a faxed hand drawn map/step by step instructions from the client from the main road to their site. Worked really well about 90% of the time. But if you missed a turning and got off the handwritten map you were generally screwed and would have to pull over and ask for directions. Multimap when it came along was pretty good but satnav was a total life-changer.

I haven't got a sat nav and still use maps. Occasionally I'll use Google maps directions but they don't always send you the best way.

I used to absolutely love looking through my dad's road atlas growing up, especially the little maps in the back! I'd look for all the little beer glass images because I found it funny there were beer glasses in a map 😂 obviously now I know it is just the map key and the symbol for pub 😂

I remember my parents writing to the AA and receiving a package of maps for our journey when we went on holiday.

It was also a bit more acceptable to just be half an hour late for something because you got lost!

It does make you realise how much less common incidental human contact is now though doesn't it. We did used to be able to ring somewhere where we were going and speak to a real person. Similarly you could go into a bank and be served by a person etc. Go into a library if you needed to know soemthing.

I'm so glad I have my phone/Google maps/etc. and it saves the boredom I used to feel waiting anywhere... But it is a different world compeltely.

I remember at shxool learning about the war and thinking how completely different their world was to mine and also wondering too what would be so different in the future that I'd look back and think it was different then!

I am 50 and remember seeing a highlighter pen for the first time. I was disappointed because I thought it was literally going to light up so I must have been about 6. My mum thought it was great because she could highlight the route on the map.

This , with varying results!

I used to print out directions and try to follow them as I drove. I feel I was so brave in those days, I’m not keen on driving to unknown places now, especially if I don’t know the parking situation

My dad is exactly the same. He switched on the fancy sat nav my brother bought him, shook his head and just put it back in the box. He just uses maps. Also visits somewhere once and then never needs the map again. It’s an amazing skill.

Yes, the Hanger Lane gyratory, Swindon magic roundabout and spaghetti junction are all decades old.

There are way more traffic lights and roundabouts controlling what used to be uncontrolled junctions which gives you more time to work out where you're supposed to be going. Eg Hyde Park corner and Marble Arch both used to just be a case of looking for a gap and going for it while being honked at by a black cab and with motorcycle couriers streaming past. With the traffic lights those junctions are much more sedate. Plus road signage is much better.

I used maps.

I have no sense of direction.

I was crap at maps.

Not much better with a sat nav 🤦🏼‍♀️😂

Used to look at a map before I set off and jot down notes and keep them on the passenger seat. Something like come off at junction 4, turn left at the queen Ann pub, right at petrol station second turn on right, house on right side.

Before the internet you would either have an a-z if you went on regularly, or wrote out instructions. It wasn't an issue, I think we planned better and had better memories!

I remember coming from south wales to Peterborough once with my list of directions/motorway numbers. Got a junction knowing I needed the m6 and one way said m6 London and the other said m6 north. I knew I wasn’t going to London, I knew Peterborough was north of London so took the north option. Hit Manchester before I realised I’d gone wrong

Dp still does btw, motorbike doesn't have a satnav, we occasionally do have to pull over to use google maps, typically when there's road works but it's rare

I left London recently and my phone (which is my satnav) died after 5’min. I drove to Hastings with surprising ease to meet friends then I looked at maps and drove home via somewhere I’d never been. It was surprisingly easily. I was so worried I nearly turned back, but in a weird way it was easier just looking ahead at signs

My childhood holidays, long before any internet route finders, were long voyages across Britain and sometimes Europe with mum navigating and dad driving (and sometimes getting cross with poor directions). The maps weren't huge scale; I don't know how they managed it but they did. I think you had to rely a lot more on written or verbal directions from hotel owners or passers-by.

Before I started my first job in 1998 I bought the local street atlases so I would be able to find clients.
My husband used to drive cars to the Middle East in the late 80s and 90s. He used to write on. But of paper Dover, Riems, Italy, Bari, Damascus etc. so he had a general idea which direction to head in.

A big memory of navigating as a child was pubs 😂
I remember a constant’left after the white hart’ ‘past the kings head’ or ‘if you see the carpenters arms you’ve gone too far’. You could navigate east London on pubs alone

My first trip to London after passing my test with my fiat cinquecento (yes I relate with the inbetweeners) and no sat nav was done with a friend sitting at the front with a map but she was holding it upside down lol! So following signs, reading the map, stopping at petrol stations and asking for directions. My dad used to plan days ahead and we travelled a lot.

that was the hardest part, the final leg of the journey,
written instructions were the thing
still cant totally go by post code now without knowing exactly where the house is down a lane for example with houses sharing postcodes