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A272: An Ode to a Road (by Andy)

[The following is written by Andy, Madelaine's other half, for reasons that will become evident.]

There are, sadly, few guides to individual British A-roads. In fact I can think of only one other, a 1980s BBC Bristol TV series called "Not the A38" - and since I can't find any trace of that on Google, maybe I imagined it. Route 66 and the Karakurum Highway might inspire adventurers, authors and musicians, but you don't write books about the A272. We all know that would just be silly.

Being Foreign, Pieter Boogaart didn't realise it was a silly idea so he did it anyway, cycling every inch of the road and spending months visiting places in the area and researching their history.First published in 2000 and revised and updated in 2003, A272: an Ode to a Road is a masterpiece: a travel book crammed with interesting facts, historical trivia, personal anecdotes and raving eccentricities. A large-format, glossy paperback, it even has its own unique page layout invented by the author himself (who also took all the many photographs and got his wife to do most of the illustrations). The central band of each double-page spread page describes features on or near the road: another strip of text below describes "sights up to six or sometimes seven miles south of the road" while the top band does the same fort the area to the north. The right and left margins are reserved for supporting notes: potted histories, explanations of technical terms, poems, or whatever came into Boogaart's head at the time. (Early on he announces, "Don't you wish there were a simple two-letter code for all the counties as they were before 'conservative' governments messed them up? I've got one." He promptly lists his patent two-letter county codes and uses them throughout the rest of the book.)  Bolded words in the main narrative connect you with the background information in the margin notes, in a kind of printed version of a hyperlink. Sometimes Boogaart will wander off into several pages of musing about the quirkiness of the English language, Follies, B&Bs or peace campaigners, all written from the detached and amused point of view of the Anlgogphile foreigner - a bit like Bill Bryson but more... well, more Dutch.

It's hard for me to see this book through unbiased eyes. Growing up in a suburb of Winchester in the 'sixties and 'seventies (yes, Winchester does have suburbs) for me the A272 was the "main road", the one we had to cross to reach junior school or the local shops, the one along which most family car journeys started. When the Winchester to Stockbridge stretch was re-routed to the north of the city, it felt as if a piece of my childhood had been obliterated.

The Hampshire section, stretching over the Downs from Winchester to Petersfield, is renowned for its scenic beauty (and for its alarmingly high accident rate). The Sussex section, though less dramatic, passes through the heart of rural Southern England, an area rich in history, and neatly dodges any conurbation larger than a modest-sized market town. It probably adds to your enjoyment of the book if you know the road, but as the book's surprising success showed, its appeal is wider than that. Someone in the Winchester tourist office once told me that foreign visitors actually arrive armed with a copy and determined to follow the "A272 trail".

I love this book. It manages to be both erudite and amusing. It's packed full of the little bits of history and legend that make a place what it is, and it's a useful guide to interesting little sights you might otherwise miss. Even now, flicking though it, I've just stumbled across a picture of a folly I've never seen, south of Liphook. Time to get on the bike and seek it out... 

A272 has been out of print for a while, but copies are easy to come by on Amazon. I bought mine for a couple of quid in an eBay auction. Get the expanded second edition if you can. Dip into it, then go exploring.

14 September 2009 from Madelaine - the book thief

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