My photo.
~
Last Friday I drove from Cornwall to Bath (c146 miles) to see my youngest son.
Everything was fine as I knew most of the route, just not how to get from the M5 to Bath. I usually go by train or coach. So of course I used the GPS on my phone. I didn’t have a holder for it, so it was balanced awkwardly on the passenger seat and sometimes on my thigh so I could hear what the GPS lady was saying to me. Every so often it switched itself off so I had to find somewhere to park and start it up again, but on the whole it was fine. Too hot once I was out of Cornwall, around 32 deg C, but still it wasn’t too bad.
My plan was to get off the M5 and onto the A38 which would take me into the town made of sandstone the colour of fudge which always makes me feel I should knock a corner off a balcony and munch it down, just to be polite.
However the Demons of the GPS had other ideas.
The whole junction to the A38 was closed by serried ranks of cones. I had to go past and at that point I must have got confused. Still following the GPS, not knowing it had been taken over by demons, I followed instructions that took me up and down and round about and through quiet villages and along narrow lanes full of tractors pulling weird machinery.
I didn’t dare stop following the Demon GPS because by that time I had no idea where I was and, as usual, there were no signposts, or signposts hidden by brambles and bindweed. Then I somehow got on a long bewildering drive up into hills along a single track road with hedges both sides. At least it had elderly asphalt. My new (old) car is the nearest approach to a donkey that eats petrol which was just as well because there was a stream of traffic coming towards me along the single track. They must have been ensorcelled as well.
The endless cars came the other way in nervous single file, people pulling into passing places, me getting another couple of metres along before having to duck into another layby...
I’m sure it was very scenic but unfortunately I was too busy driving the car to notice. In fact I was also screaming at the GPS for being a bitch that couldn’t find her own clit with both hands, which probably gave the Demons a laugh.
Eventually I came into Bath by a modest suburban road, drenched in sweat (lovely sunny weather) and dehydrated. I’d run out of water halfway through the epic journey that was supposed to take about three to four hours but actually took five and a half hours. Funnily enough, there was no service station on the single-tracked road to Hell that was the B-whatever-the-eff-it-was.
Once I was finally in Bath, twitching slightly, my lovely son took me to a pub called the Black Fox and bought me some of the best cider I’ve tasted since Cornish Rattler turned to the Dark Side.
Bristol Cider Company, you saved my life.
~~~