What is a roadbook?

It's the navigator's book: the route written down as a list of little instructions, read top to bottom from start to finish. No map required — the book is the route.

Hand a stranger a map and they'll find a way. Hand them a roadbook and they'll drive your way — the exact roads, the exact turns, in the exact order. That's the whole idea. A roadbook (some events say "road book", the French say roadbook too) is a small booklet, usually ring-bound so it lies flat, that describes a route as one row per instruction.

What's in a row

Almost every roadbook row carries the same three things:

• A tulip diagram — the little picture of the junction: a ball for the road you arrive on, an arrow for the road you leave by.
• Distances — usually two: the running total, and the gap since the last instruction. The navigator zeroes the trip meter at each row and counts down to the next.
• A few words — "TL at xroad", "SP Melton", "care — gravel". Short enough to say out loud in a second.

Books often add more — a cover with the total distance, a map page, a height profile, timing boxes — but rows are the heart of it.

Who uses roadbooks

Anyone who needs a whole field of strangers to drive precisely the same roads:

• Road and regularity rallies — the classic use. The organiser sets the route; crews follow it to the second.
• Rally raids and desert events — motorbike rollers ("rally rolls") are a roadbook wound onto a scrolling holder on the handlebars.
• Grand tours and driving holidays — a roadbook turns a good route into something guests can follow without a co-driver glued to a phone.
• Clubs and treasure hunts — a friendly evening run works exactly the same way, just gentler.

Where the roadbook came from

Organised road events have handed crews written route instructions for about as long as motoring clubs have existed, and the modern form — tulips plus distances in a column — spread through post-war European rallying, helped along by the Dutch Tulip Rally that gave the diagrams their name. The format has barely needed to change since: it was right the first time.

How one gets made

The organiser fixes the exact route, chooses the junctions that need an instruction, draws a tulip for each, measures the distances off the route line, adds the words and signs, checks the lot, and prints. That whole craft has its own guide: how to make a rally roadbook.