If your father owns a car, it is probable that he is a member of one of the two main motoring organisations, the A.A. or the R.A.G. Both provide many services to motorists, particularly in the event of a breakdown. If you have been on holiday by car, you may have made use of their route guides. On page 13 you will see reproduced a sheet from such a route. The left-hand side, reading from top to bottom, gives you instructions for your journey and the mileage between one place and another. The right-hand side, reading from bottom to top, is a map of your route.

The left-hand side is, of course, much abbreviated. Once you have met the abbreviation, it is not difficult to remember, for example, that S.P. means signpost.

A. Make use of both instructions and map to continue this factual description of the journey:

Leave Barnstaple by the Newport Rd., which is the A 361. After four and a half miles you will come to Swimbridge. Out of Swimbridge there is a steep hill to climb, Kerscott Hill. The next town is South Molton, seven miles further along the A 3 6 1….

B. The route sheet you have here contains most of the abbreviations used by the A.A. in their route guides. Here, in no sort of order, are those abbreviations not shown:

Compile a complete list of abbreviations used, in alphabetical order, and supply their meanings.

C. The next exercise will be better done—unless your memory is extremely accurate—if you make a journey, either on foot, by cycle, or, if you are very persuasive, by car. Imagine that you have been asked to work out for a group of friends a walking route between two points from one to two miles apart in your home town; or a three- to six-mile ramble; or a five- to ten-mile cycle trip; or a fifteen- to thirty-mile car ride. Prepare a route guide, in the style of the A.A. route sheet, using the list of abbreviations you have compiled.

D. On the opposite page you see a drawing of a derelict farm cottage miles from anywhere.