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😂

I think my parents might never have divorced with a sat nav 😂

. 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.

Large A-Z road maps of the UK had and still have little mini maps at the back of the centre part of most major cities. UK road maps are actually fairly detailed anyway.

If it was further out, you'd get directions from the place or people you were going to visit.

Later when there was the internet but before satnav, you could print out the map for the last bit of your journey.

I still do that if I'm going on a long journey especially if going to a country house hotel type location as I fear getting stranded if the internet goes down.

Map reading is a life skill that shouldn't be abandoned.

I've just remembered one. I moved to Oxford and my parents were visiting.

I knew they had a map but it only showed the start and end of the M40.

So I very clearly to my parents that the M40 was now complete.

So my mum navigated my dad off the M40, took the A roads and navigated him back on the it later.

I often had to go to unfamilar places some distance away with work. Always familiarised myself with the route using road map and street guide. Also used to put key directions on Post it notes stuck on the centre of steering wheel. Peeled the top one when that point reached.

Are you me!?

My Dad had been driving years but mostly country roads, he was not used to driving around big or unfamiliar towns and cities.

Mum didn't drive and was a terrible navigator. She would have two road atlases open - the one she found easiest to read but which was terribly out of date and the more up-to-date one that she found confusing. Then she would forget about navigating while she enjoyed the scenery until Dad needed to know where to go NOW! Mum's "Just give me a minute while I work it out" was not the most helpful response.

So many memories of sitting in the back of the vehicle on family holidays listening to the rows and wondering if we would ever get there.

Even after Dad died, if we were taking Mum anywhere, even somewhere she knew well and had been many times before, the family rule was never to rely on her for directions!

My uncle, who had been driving faultlessly for more than forty years, suddenly got a speeding fine, and was so ashamed of this, that he got a sat nav that showed where all the speed cameras are, and this was his only reason for buying it. But he was not very confident with new technology; he had barely even used a computer, and still had a phone with a dial, so he quickly abandoned it, and never used it for navigation.

Map reading is a life skill that shouldn't be abandoned. Map reading was not a universal skill even before the internet. Quite a lot of people were truly awful at it.

Also used to put key directions on Post it notes stuck on the centre of steering wheel. I remember before post-it notes. Long strip of paper with directions stuck to dashboard.

The biggest thing for me was not sat-nav (which I don't always use) but Street View - being able to see what all the critical junctions look like "turn right at the white house with the tower". But most of my driving is rural so uncomplicated.

I had an A to Z of Lancashire in the early 90s when I was divorced and getting out and about on my own. I loved that book! I also loved looking at maps of the Lake District, planning which fells I would climb etc. I still like to look at maps, but have no inclination to travel anywhere more than 20 miles away. Its a good job I live somewhere nice!

The one place we never use sat nav is Cornwall. It doesn’t have an option to avoid those unused roads that are extremely narrow with no passing places, much better to use a map book. We found this out the hard way when satnav took us down a road so narrow even my Micra struggled not to get scratched by the hedges. I hate to think what would happen if two big SUVs had met.

This has reminded me that when I was about 13 I had a penpal in Edinburgh who decided to visit me one day - without telling me or his parents. He took a train to London then the tube to the nearest tube stop to my house. I lived in the East End, in a an area that wasn’t (and still isn’t) served by the tube so the stop was a few miles from my house. He didn’t have a map and just started walking in the general direction of Hackney, stopping people along the way to ask for directions to my road. By a complete fluke he stopped a woman with her son and the boy knew me as we went to the same school. They escorted. him to my house.

Both his parents and mine were clearly people who had their children in the 1970s as from what I can recall there wasn’t too much fuss about it all. His mum and dad took 2 days to come and collect him😂

AA Route planner, printed off in the car hahaha

Roadmaps and arguments.

Also - if you look it up, there is scientific research that shows that men find destinations by "M1, junction 12, A38, junction 5" etc etc. Whereas women find their way by "big house on corner, turn left, there's a Tesco on the right, go straight down till you get to the school with blue facade" etc. And I'm rubbish at reading maps. So I guess it all makes sense - at least to me

They're call country lanes - and most certainly not unused

We had a higher tolerance for getting lost and it taking time to orient yourself, I think.

They're call country lanes - and most certainly not unused

There are some which really aren't usable except by proper 4x4s, the satnavs can't all tell the difference between lane and a rough track.

My father first got a car in 1962. Mum never learned to drive and would navigate using an AA map book. Sadly she was not a great navigator. There was an occasion when a navigational error landed us in Maidenhead, and this was always referred to by my father as ‘the time your mother kept taking us to Maidenhead’.

Ha! I've driven a vw polo round our unmade tracks for years!

I mean the ones that are so unused they have a lot of grass growing in the middle. I live in Dorset so am used to narrow country lanes but the ones in Cornwall are not meant for much traffic and have few passing places. It must be even more hellish in the tourist season now everyone is relying on google maps.

Yeah, that's why a small car is essential. Easy to reverse back to a parking place.

Maps then asking people when you got nearer your destination.

I quite miss random people asking me for directions.

You probably know the local going underfoot even in very bad weather, though, and what your car can cope with in bad mud or snow, plus you know what’s over the next rise, are confident in reversing all the way back to the road when you meet a tractor etc.

We used to live somewhere years ago where the steep track down to the house was impassable in snow for anything other than a 4 wheel drive.

Interesting. I'm aware that DH knows the route to get somewhere, whereas I know which road to take each time I reach a junction but I'm not so clear on the whole route in advance. I think that's what you are describing.

And I'm very good at reading maps.

I've rung my dad before and said "I'm lost" and he can say "oh junction X? That's where X pub is. I know exactly where you are"

If I give him two places he can tell me the entire route without looking anything up

On the other hand, he couldn't tell you when I was born...

Most often I use the Satnav's "fastest" feature to get somewhere but I still have a road atlas in my car. If I want to go a scenic route or avoid a stretch of road, I plot it on the map then put intermediate stops into the Satnav to force it to go my preferred route.

I just can't retain directions in my head and, before Satnav, used to have to keep pulling over to re-check the map.

Occasionally if I have no time constraints, I will navigate just using the sun (and road signs.) I did that quite successfully about three weeks ago : knew I needed to go north and just kept taking roads that felt like they were going the right way.