best free printable route finder?

scbk

I'm self employed delivering across the whole country. Don't have a GPS but have a £2 2005 AA road atlas and a street map of Inverness. I reckon I could find my way to most towns in Scotland unaided, maybe a quick glance at the atlas before I leave to pick best route. For England I just look at the atlas and try to remember what roads I want, the signs are pretty usful anyway. To get to exact address's I go on google maps and print off 2 pages to guide me in from the trunk road/M-way I've chosen.

BTW I'm not an old fart, still a teenager (just!) and I've only had my licence 8 months


:cool:

balsingh

I remember my strudent days when we used drive to a city completely unknown to us and used good old 'asking' for directions from locals to find our way.

malcolmwilliamson

moonrakerz wrote: »

To be honest I don't find any of the ones available to be very good. They seem to rely on you having a rough idea of the route to enable you to put in enough "vias" to get a decent route ! They will give you a route - but don't rely on that being the shortest or the quickest.

A £1.99 road atlas from Wilko is still the best.

If you use the michelin.com routefinder you can choose your route search criterion from

Recommended by Michelin (the default setting)
Shortest
Quickest
Economical

The only downside of the Michelin planner AFAIC is the expression of distances in km. Does anyone know how to get it to quote in miles?

saxmund

I like getmethere on the Toyota website. I havent used it for a while but I always found it particularly good for that last bit around urban streets.

Having said that I generally plan routes using my trusty AA 3miles to 1 inch Big Road Atlas and I jot down the directions on a small pad that fixes to the dashboard.

To get miles from kilometres, multiply by 1.6.

moonrakerz

malcolmwilliamson wrote: »

If you use the michelin.com routefinder you can choose your route search criterion from

Recommended by Michelin (the default setting)
Shortest
Quickest
Economical

Most of the sites give that option anyway.

Am example of how poor these sites are. Last week I was looking for a mileage from home to Southampton. I tried four different sites and none of them came up with the shortest and quickest route (which I have used many, many times). For some strange reason all the sites were ignoring the A360 across Salisbury Plain. Only when I put in a couple of places on this road did I get the route that I was after - and it was 10 miles shorter than the others which these planners produced.

lucy2308

moonrakerz wrote: »

Most of the sites give that option anyway.

Am example of how poor these sites are. Last week I was looking for a mileage from home to Southampton. I tried four different sites and none of them came up with the shortest and quickest route (which I have used many, many times). For some strange reason all the sites were ignoring the A360 across Salisbury Plain. Only when I put in a couple of places on this road did I get the route that I was after - and it was 10 miles shorter than the others which these planners produced.

Moonraker - maybe you can help me, I am travelling down to Southampton from west of Scotland to pick up a cruise. All of the routefinder websites direct me onto the M1 skirting London then to Southampton. Surely this is not the quickest route. I hate the M1 and although maybe quickest if there is no traffic this is never the case.

Can you help?

Thanks

scbk

What about M74, M6, M40 etc? That's what AA route planner throws up for Glasgow-Southampton

susy_2

I use AA. Tried RAC once but it tried to drive me into the sea!

Didn't know about all the others. Will give them a try.