Roads by 10: How it Started
"Roads by 10" is one of those phenomena that could never have happened without the Internet. It's the result of a collaborative project by members of the SABRE web community over the course of a month during January and February 2002.

Like all good ideas, it started by accident. We were discussing "misplaced" roads on the SABRE message boards – roads that are in the right zone but far removed from their cousins with nearby numbers. The conversation went something like this:

"I've found an A176 near Billericay in Essex. Is it a misprint?"

"No - I drove on it last week!"

"I never knew there was an A176 in Essex. All the other A170s are in North Yorkshire and County Durham..." and the author proceeded to list them.

"Actually the A175's not there any more."

And that was the end of that, until a few days later I had an idea. Why not encourage people to post their own similar list of ten roads in a familiar area of the country, to build a gradually evolving catalogue of three-digit A-roads? I tentatively started with the A200s in south-east London, not knowing how people would respond.

A couple trickled in at first, and I thought that might be the end. Then, suddenly, there was an avalanche. Before I knew it we were up to 300. People were sending in roads not just from their own areas but from neighbouring ones, or ones they lived in as a child. One contributor sent in over 130 route descriptions!

What was fun about this for me was the element of discovery. Within each group of ten there were some you knew like the back of your hand, but there were also some unfamiliar ones. And when you got "misplaced" roads like the A176 others needed to help out. Then there were those that seemed to have disappeared without trace, or perhaps never existed in the first place. And inevitably, there were some parts of the country where we couldn't find anyone with local knowledge, and those areas had to be filled in straight from the map.

"Roads by 10" has turned out to be a useful resource for anyone who wants to check the route of a particular road, as well as an entertaining tour of the country by road numbers. I'm extremely grateful to all the contributors who originally took part, and to Paul Berry for all the work he's put into maintaing it on his UK Roads site for the past two years.

Onwards and upwards!

Guy Barry