Thought for the month
Last weekend Michael and I were invited to visit our grandson’s school to see him playing hockey.
We first went to a meeting at the Chapel and then set off for Bradfield College which is near Reading.
In these days of Sat.Nav it is not usual to carry a road map but for some reason I said to my sister ,”did she happen to have one in her car “(I knew that she usually carried one) She duly went and got it for me.
All was going well the Sat.Nav was doing its job - not that we really needed it for at least the first hour of the journey. However, as we were driving along the M25 we were suddenly told to move into the lefthand lane and take the next junction which was the M3. This was quite a surprise as we thought we would be using the M4. However, we followed the instructions and moved onto the M3. Quite a bit later we were told to take the next exit and then we were directed to take the 2nd turning at the roundabout onto the A322.
This is where the fun started! The A322 was closed - now what did we do? - nothing from the Sat.Nav so we just carried straight on waiting for our instructions. Then we were told to turn right, then left, then left again and low and behold we were back at the roundabout where the road was closed. We turned round and headed away from the closed road, this time we ignored the Sat.Nav when it said turn right at the next turning but then we received some different instructions, so we followed them. We went down a very narrow road not wide enough to pass an oncoming car and guess what, we eventually found ourselves back at the roundabout where the road was closed! To cut a long story short 40 minutes later we discovered there were about 40 cars like us all lost and going round and round in circles.
We decided to turn the Sat.Nav off and call at the next garage to find out exactly where we were so we could then use our road map. The Lord was with us, as we turned into the Garage there were 2 nice young men standing chatting, we pulled up in front of them and asked them where we were on our map. They were very helpful and pinpointed our position and off we went.
Bradfield College didn’t show on our map so once we had got through Ascot we turned the Sat.Nav back on and it led us the rest of the way. Unfortunately, our journey had taken 4hr 40 minutes instead of 2hr 40 minutes, so we had missed the entire first half of the hockey match.
We later discovered that there had been an accident on the M4 which was why we had been told to use the M3!! The moral in this is never leave home without a printed Road Map because you can’t trust the Sat.Nav!