In the days before sat nav!

[Alibaba99]

I remember those days. Going somewhere new required a chunk of time the evening before using Autoroute Express and an atlas to work out and check the route, especially marking the key waypoints.

If I visited friends I would ring up and get them to provide the details for the final stages of the journey, including descriptions of where turns were. My car was full of hand written notes for various journeys.

 

[poosemon]

If I am abroad I always have a paper version map of that country with me still, and whilst i will have Sat Nav via the phone on, I will have looked into the journey before hand via either the map or google maps to check the route out more or less in my head.

I do enjoy using the map to research were we are going as you will sometimes roads/viewpoints etc that might look interesting. Things you would usually miss if you are blindly following sat nav.

Example being last year I was in the Lake Garda area and knew I had a day to go to some of the car museums (Lamborghini -> Pagani -> Ferrari) and got google to give me a route. When reviewing a map I saw i could alter the route to go via Campogalliano without much of a dog leg and drive by the abandoned Bugatti factory. Something i would have almost certainly have missed relying solely on Sat Nav.

 

[DXP55]

Years ago when we went anywhere I had a quick look at the maps and then give the wife the book of maps- Has anyone else got a wife who when you take a left or right turn then turns the map as well ? She always wanted to go up the page.
Even now with satnav I always look at the map first to see where I am basically heading and any major towns I should look out for.

 

[Django x2]

Recently found an item of 65 year old motoring memorabilia.

It is route itinerary prepared for my Parents by the RAC Club back in 1957.

The route is for directions from Le Touquet Airport (My parents used to talk about using a Car Air ferry to cross the channel back when they were young, I guess this was one of the occasions that they did so. I cant be certain of this, but since that is where the directions start from, I dare say it is a reasonable guess)

With the destination being Teheran, a total journey listed as 4690 miles.

It is actually very like a modern printout that you might get from an on line route planner.

There are details of which roads to take, distance between waypoints/junctions. Maps of the more significant towns and cities, and descriptions of the state of the roads and landmarks to look out for on your journey.

The route takes in places like Paris, Lyon, Monte Carlo, Genoa, Venice, Trieste, Zagreb, Salonica, Istanbul, Ankara, Aleppo, Baghdad and finally Teheran.

The Road descriptions vary from, at the beginning, "A undulating road with no scenery of particular interest" (Le Touquet to Abbeville, 38 miles) to the perhaps euphemistic "A fairly well defined road running across lonely stretches of the Syrian Desert" (Aleppo to Damascus, 236 1/2 miles)

It must have been a fantastic trip! I am very jealous!

If the world was a different place I would try to repeat the journey but really, today it would be completely out of the question.

I will have to scan it in before the paper rots (Though it is currently in very good condition. Must have been high quality paper at the time)

More interesting would be if you put the route direct into google maps, would it take you the same way

 

[JRS]

The Road descriptions vary from, at the beginning, "A undulating road with no scenery of particular interest" (Le Touquet to Abbeville, 38 miles)

The roads to Abbeville are nearly all still like that Though at least there is one very decent restaurant when you get there (Le Comptoir du Malt, great food and exceptional beer).

 

[chaparral]

It must have been a fantastic trip! I am very jealous!

Me & my mates used to go on motorbike trips all over france before we had a GPS and it was much more fun then doing it with a GPS

I find now we have a GPS all we do now is hold the throttle and follow the GPS directions
All the fun of getting lost, Trying to find a hotel, Garage, cash machine or anywhere is lost,
GPS has just made everything so easy it kind of boring
But once you used a GPS you won't go without it

 

[Orionaut]

Me & my mates used to go on motorbike trips all over france before we had a GPS and it was much more fun then doing it with a GPS

I find now we have a GPS all we do now is hold the throttle and follow the GPS directions
All the fun of getting lost, Trying to find a hotel, Garage, cash machine or anywhere is lost,
GPS has just made everything so easy it kind of boring

Some years ago, when I first got a Sat-nav, I used to take my Mum out for Sunday afternoon drives.

My "Game" was to pick a direction on a main road that I knew, drive out to a random destination maybe 30 miles away and then set the sat-nav for home using shortest distance (Lots of random back roads) to go back home using roads that I would never have been on before and never normally consider useing.

You can still explore and have fun with a sat-nav, but perhaps without the added frisson of risking getting completely Pixilated (Haven't heard that phrase recently, I don't know if it still used. Used to describe betting lost on the highway, particularly in the west country )

But once you used a GPS you won't go without it

Bit like mobile phones.

I was something of an early adopter with cell phones.

I still have most of my old phones including my first few.

I never had the famous Yuppie-phone (Motorolla) I actually had one before they came popular.

My first phone was the one I call the Sherpa (Because you needed one to carry it for you) The one the size of a small car battery with a separate handset and curly lead.

Before then, I thought nothing on driving off into the sunset with nothing but a roadmap and my own natural sense of direction (Which is actually quite good mostly)

Nowadays I would feel naked going anywhere without the phone. like with the sat-nav, I would rather go off for a drive with no trousers than no phone!

It is a shame really, It is about fear rather than a desire to keep up with facepalm or whatever, we have all this wonderful technology that has enhanced our lives greatly over the last 60 years or so, but at the same time it has made us all fearful people, scared of the unknown.

 

[snapdragon69]

The route takes in places like Paris, Lyon, Monte Carlo, Genoa, Venice, Trieste, Zagreb, Salonica, Istanbul, Ankara, Aleppo, Baghdad and finally Teheran.

This wouldn't be too bad if once you got into Turkey you stayed in Turkey instead of going south into syria and iraq.
There are plenty who have done this on horizonsunlimited website. I remember one old man in his 70's did it from UK to Tehran around 7-8 years ago. he did it on a 100 year old motorbike and documented his journey in a blog. I also remember a few students went there in a London Taxi and they had a few scrapes and the Taxi broke a few times.
In a normal car it would be great but you would need a visa and carnet de passage (passport for your car). you have to leave a deposit of a large percentage of the cars worth which is returned when you leave - so best not to use a new/high value car. This is due to the 100% tax on imported cars in Iran. I have been to Iran 5 times and the cities are not dangerous. Places like Kerman or Balochistan near Pakistan are though as there are Pakistani bandits hiding in the hills. As long as you keep your head down and mind your own business there is no issues with the Authorities.

 

[Quartz]

If the world was a different place I would try to repeat the journey but really, today it would be completely out of the question.

Why not? When Covid is done, of course. Either stop at Ankara or turn north there and detour around to Tehran.

And I always have a road map in the car.

 

[Jamauk]

I have sat nav in the car, on an old car a while ago I had to drive to Cornwall (2005), I planned a route with an instructions but also memorised the turn, I can still remember it to this day (A34, M4, M5, A30, A395...). I still had a road map in the car that I don’t think I ever used.

Going back before we had cars though I’d get horse & kart to Southampton, charter a ship from there to Cornwall and use the stars to navigate.