A953

If there were ever a prize for the most pointless A-road, the A953 would be high up on the list. It was a brief stretch of tarmac extending from the terminus of the A97, along Quayside to Banff Marina. However, following a review in 2017 by Aberdeenshire Council, which recommended making the road unclassified, it appears that the A953 is no more.

The A953 Quayside runs past Banff Harbour

The route began at the northern edge of Banff, on the site of the long-gone railway station, via a right-turn at the T-junction which marked the end of the A97. The alignment points due north, but the road immediately looped around like an upturned horseshoe to head south-east to the Quayside, parallel to the A97 but at a lower level. It ran along Banff Marina, past Banff Sailing Club, to end approximately at a fork in the road. From here, the left prong continues as an unclassified road along Harbour Place towards the B9142, while the right prong climbs steeply up the similarly unclassified Sheriffs Brae to Banff town centre. The whole route was less than a fifth of a mile long, and could easily have been made an extension of the A97. It could just as easily have been left unclassified.

Originally the A97 ended and the A953 started slightly farther east, in front of the railway station rather than on the site of it, where a hairpin bend marked the change from one number to the other. As far as can be ascertained from the historic map scales available, the endpoint at the harbour did not change.

Few maps, other than the Ordnance Survey, marked the route as an A-road at all. In addition, neither the A953 nor the A97 north of the A98 were signposted.

Nevertheless, the route remained listed by Aberdeenshire Council as still following its 1922 itinerary until 2017, so it must have served some purpose! The 1922 lists show a number of A-roads whose sole reason for existence appears to be to provide docks with an A-road connection, demonstrating that sea transport was far important then than it is now. The continued Class I status of the A953 was however unusual, considering that it is completely invisible on the ground.

The OS still shows the A953 as an A road, implying that the recommendation in Aberdeenshire's 2017 review was not implemented. However, at large scales the map now shows its route as an extension of A97, strange as this may seem for a recent change. To add to the uncertainty, different scales of current OS maps show slightly different endpoints. Google also shows the A97 extending to the harbour.

The 1922 MOT Road List defines this route as: Branch to Banff Harbour