My dad had a lot to do with the split level section heading west from Gordano at Bristol. I was chatting about it to him the other day and my grown up kids still call it ‘Grandads Motorway’.
One of my first, straight from university, was the M8 through Glasgow, limited to placing tree planting on the landscaping drawings as the engineering design was pretty much done. Mainly rowans, if you are interested. I occasionally go along there with colleagues nowadays and draw this to their somewhat reluctant attention. They are MY trees!
I have exactly that book somewhere! Not in that condition, mind.
The AA also did personalised itineraries as a members' service, from x to y, which I think were given up in the 1970s. They were assembled from a range of pre-printed A5 sheets that each covered about 10-20 miles, stapled together individually, printed on both sides so you could read one side on the outward, then turn it over for the return. Maybe some recall these too.
Now colleague from self-same university whose family came from Basingstoke, by the nature of our course, got a summer job at AA HQ there in this very personalised map production department, when it was on its last legs. He described the group of staff involved. There were a couple of elderly onetime road patrols, no longer fit for days on the road or under bonnets; there were likewise a couple of former secretaries who had zero geographical understanding. One supervisor had some understanding. There was a big rack down one side with all the pages kept loose, which they spent the day pulling out in the required combinations and putting together. Anything not covered by these was done, often the beginning/end of the route, was done on an old manual typewriter. The old boys, of course, didn't type, so would laboriously write this bit out by hand, and the onetime secretaries would type them out, misprints and all. Just the supervisor could answer "What about Reading to Cambridge?". "Oh, 177, 42, 36, 83" off the top of his head. Although the supervisor was meant to check them all, there were apparently plenty of complete nonsenses sent out. Letters of complaint about inaccuracies were pinned to the noticeboard, with choice comments scrawled underneath - said colleague who had an artistic bent said he used to do them sketches of what the complaining member might look like!
