The AA Book

The Automobile Association Handbook, 1986-1987. I became a member when I bought my six-year-old blue mini in 1972. My dad joined around 1960. 

The Handbook was originally annual, then twice-yearly, and from the 1990s undated. I have seen later editions, but the date is only in the small print. Like others, I kept mine in the car and threw the old one away when a new one came out. This one found its way to the bookcase. 

It contained a wealth of useful information for motorists, such as tips on basic car maintenance, driving in winter, and road signs. It listed AA telephone numbers, recommended repairers, and hotels. It had road maps covering the whole country, and more detailed motorway maps showing all the junctions and service stations. You could get by pretty well without anything else unless you needed a larger-scale local map. I  used mine to navigate all over Scotland and elsewhere. 

It was always interesting to browse through the Gazetteer section, which gave details of every place in the country with a population above around 10,000. From this, we see that Goole in Yorkshire had a population of 17,127 (which would have excluded the local villages). Following Local Government reorganisation, it had moved from The West Riding of Yorkshire to become “the hub of Humberside”. It shows the telephone area dialling code as 0405 and the map grid reference. Markets were held on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and there was a cattle market on Mondays. Goole is 20 miles from Doncaster, 27 from Hull, 26 from Scunthorpe, and 23 from York. A very rare error shows London as only 18 miles away, when it probably should read 188. We can see that Goole had one AA recommended hotel, the Clifton, which is a 2* hotel, and that Glews Garage was an AA approved repairer, and also then a Vauxhall agent. I am sure that previous editions showed further information, such as early closing day which was Thursday, but this practice had probably been discontinued by 1986. 

AA approved hotels were rated from one to five stars according to quality and services offered. 5* hotels, such as the Queens in central Leeds, were the best and most expensive. 

For bigger places, the Gazetteer showed local maps, such as for Hull, which had a population of 268,302, three 3* hotels and one 2*. These city centre maps were good enough to find my way to meetings and interviews in Durham, Leicester, Nottingham, Huddersfield, Edinburgh, and even central Manchester. 

The Handbook also showed road maps for the whole country. The example is  East and West Yorkshire from Huddersfield to Hull  (right click and open in new window to enlarge). By 1986, there were also junction-by-junction motorway maps. The example shows the corresponding part of the M62. Before the 1970s, there were few motorways in this region. I remember driving across the Pennines on the Western M62 for the first time, around 1973, and being awestruck by the astonishing grandeur. 

Again, I think the Handbook once included details discontinued by 1986. I seem to remember lists of vehicle registration plates. For example, vehicles ending WW or WY would have first been registered in the eastern part of West Yorkshire. But one detail still included is the mileage chart, which is something else I loved to ponder. It gives the distance from Aberdeen to Hull by road as 361 miles, and from Inverness to Penzance as 723. 

There have been many changes since the handbook was published. Among them, many of the named hotels have gone, Goole does not hold cattle markets, and Glews Garage no longer stands proudly with its name in iconic huge letters on the roof beside the M62. Goole, traditionally in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and then moved to the ridiculous Humberside, is now in East Yorkshire, even though historically in the West Riding. However, the motorway goes no nearer to Hull, despite considerable road improvements since I started driving.

As with so many of these artefacts, they set off unexpected chains of thought not considered for years, but rather than create an overly-long post, I will save them for another.