Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo

For the umpteenth time this trip I found myself wishing I’d bought a GPS navigation system before leaving Cork. No more wrong turns, no more uncertainty, no more doubt, no more trying to decipher ineligible foreign road-signs through rainy windscreens. As it was we’d taken the wrong turn onto the motorway from Tours and were heading for Paris instead of Le Mans.

This wouldn’t have been quite so bad if we’d realised our mistake straight away. But Murphy’s Law works just as well in France, so we naturally realised our error just after passing the last convenient exit to reach the right road. Forty minutes later another exit hove into view. We were miles out, but, loath to retrace our steps on the motorway we set off cross-country.

Here a GPS would have come in really handy, rapidly calculating a new route to get us to our destination as quickly as possible. But of course, if we’d had a GPS we never would have gone wrong in the first place. Seven hours later an exhausted Jones party rolled into Cherbourg.

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