Gentlemen,
As most of you are aware Dan Howden and myself sometimes collect items for Internal Fire Museum that have been donated etc. The collection places can be sometimes found in out of the way places and it was for this reason that I finally succumbed and bought myself a Sat/Nav, that and the fact that Halfords had lowered their prices to below £100.00 :-))
I have had mine about a month and it has already vindicated the purchase on several occasions whether it has been for work or pleasure but I find it has a couple of annoying habits. This last Friday gone I made a delivery run to Internal Fire to take the Kelvin Dan and I recently recovered and some much needed belting that the museum needs for its exhibits, I decided to totally rely on the Sat\Nav for the whole journey once I had cleared the route I know very well. After a while it turned me off of the M50 and sent me along the A40 and after a period of time I realised that even though I knew I was on the A40 I did not actually know where I was which then brought the thought if the Sat\Nav went tilt I'm lost because all I had been doing is responding to instructions and had not looked at one road sign. I then found its Achilles heel, again under instruction and in a unknown part of Wales I was told to turn left, which I duly did, to find myself in a very narrow lane towing a trailer. The lane was that narrow the bushes occasionally brushed the sides of the van, there where no turning or passing places and thankfully nothing came the other way, I even found myself in the middle of a farm yard. The road turned out to be only about two miles long but I can now understand how Artic's get stuck in lanes. The Sat\Nav is a brilliant invention but I wont be discarding the paper navigation system I have in the van for a long time yet. There is one very big plus that I have found and that is the beautiful scenery you would not necessarily have driven through if you had relied on a map to navigate by.
Martin P