Old-fashioned route guides

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Foghat

Freight-train-groove-rider
Recently, I developed a hankering for two cycling route guides I'd first owned in the early 1980s, when I started cycling in earnest, but since mislaid. Cycling seemed a hard sport/pastime in the early days, especially hills, and I'd concluded touring would be my thing, as racing seemed to be beyond me.

But then I started getting stronger, realised I was actually reasonably good, including on hills. So I got into fast/hard/endurance riding, searching out all the hilly terrain in Britain, then the Alps, and eventually started racing. Somehow those two route guide books got cut adrift, although I continued to explore Britain's roads.....and I would make my own routes from Ordnance Survey maps.

Later, after I stopped racing, I would eagerly acquire great rafts of more modern route guides.....partly to identify new places to ride, partly to remind myself about the areas I'd already explored.

But those two books stayed in my consciousness, and the urge to re-acquire them, and to recapture that part of my youth, kept growing, until I finally decided to hunt them down.....and bought them from Abe Books for the princely total sum of £6. They're in great condition, despite being nearly 40 years old, and exactly as I remember them. The first thing I did was to locate the reference to Cheesefoot Head in the CTC Route Guide, as that book was the first time I'd heard of it, or known it was the huge natural amphitheatre in the South Downs where Eisenhower addressed the Allied troops just before they set off on the D-Day missions. I then went looking for the references in Weekend Cycling to Fat Betty on the Hutton-le-Hole route that I recalled from all those years ago.

The route maps are quaintly simple by today's standards, as is much of the cycle-touring guidance and advice within. And the routes make more use of A roads than would be considered acceptable in today's levels of motorised traffic. But somehow they still have a unique fascination as a reminder of a virtually bygone era of route representation and promulgation, and I've spent several hours perusing them again.

Anyone else got these, or similar style old-fashioned cycling route guides, perhaps from even further back in time?

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Location
London
Thanks for making me feel bloody old with your tales of ye olde "bygone era" of the 80s.
 
Location
London

oldwheels

Legendary Member
Location
Isle of Mull
I have
Cycling by Reg Coley 1952
Teach Yourself Cycling by Reginald C. Shaw 1953
Cycling Manual by H. H. England first published 1917, my edition 23rd edition 1954
Adventure Cycling in Britain byTim Hughes 1978
25 Cycle Routes Edinburgh and Lothian by Derek Purdy 1996

There are several other more modern ones and the last modern one is only in as it may interest our Edinburgh member.
Teach Yourself and the Cycling Manual do not have route suggestions but the others have.
 

bagpuss

Guru
Location
derby
From a time when tweed ruled and gears but few and cars? sat nav's and satrav !
Jacksons Cyclist guide to Yorkshire published 1900 . It still has its basic folded map .The time taken to compile it must have involved a lot of riders and print setters .
50766893232_49c257103b_z.jpg Jacksons Cyclist guide to Yorkshire Dated 1900 by rebalrid, on Flickr

and a little earlier . CTC road books 1,2,& 3 from 1893 to 1897 this was the 2nd edition of the publication . Again the work involved is quite something . The members of the CTC ready pulled the stops out .Each has a cloth map within . They all beloged to one CTC member from the time. Each contained highly detailed place to place routes with indermediate mileages etc

50766038658_365525d438_z.jpg CTC road books from 1893 to 1897 by rebalrid, on Flickr
 
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OP
OP
Foghat

Foghat

Freight-train-groove-rider
More from a bygone era . Harold Briercliffe cycling touring guides dated 1949 .

Jacksons Cyclist guide to Yorkshire published 1900 . It still has its basic folded map .The time taken to compile it must have involved a lot of riders and print setters .

CTC road books 1,2,& 3 from 1893 to 1897 this was the 2nd edition of the publication . Again the work involved is quite something . The members of the CTC ready pulled the stops out .Each has a cloth map within . They all beloged to one CTC member from the time. Each contained highly detailed place to place routes with indermediate mileages etc

Interesting - thanks for posting those. Curious to know what's inside them! I may try to source an example.....

I seem to remember reading articles by Harold Briercliffe, in the early 80s, in the cycletouring periodical Cycling World, back when it was in tabloid newspaper format rather than the magazine format it later adopted. Peter Knottley too, I think.
 
OP
OP
Foghat

Foghat

Freight-train-groove-rider
This one also from the 80’s remains viable as a guide but not necessarily as a guide for clothing...

The CTC Route Guide I have, which sets out a very much road-based network of routes right across the UK and Ireland, includes a number of 'alternative' route options - such as the Lairig Ghru in the Cairngorms, with just a casual mention that it may be a bit rough and involve a bit of pushing!

While Weekend Cycling, said on the cover to be a set of scenic routes for 'easy' touring, sends the reader over Hardknott Pass.....(and check out the gearing on the bike on the front cover!).
 
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