Angel of the North

We set off southwards towards Englandshire. Armed with Mr Tom(Tom) and our map book (circa 2004), we were confident we could find the way through the conurbation that is central England.

I had looked at the AA suggested route the night before, but didn't print it out, trusting touchingly in Mr Tom (Tom)... Wrong!!

We were whizzing down a six lane motorway when he suddenly started beeping loudly and saying, ever more forcefully,

'In 300 yards, turn around.'

'In 200 yards, turn around!'

We were shouting at him that we were on a motorway. There were other words, too. The beeping and ridiculous instructions continued, even when I had pulled out the power cord.

So there we were, Mr Tom (Tom) had lost his marbles, we had no AA instructions, and didn't have much idea of the exact location of our destination, just a postcode. We only had an out of date map book with loads of tiny roads and numbers so small that I couldn't read them anyway.

However, we went into the next Services, and consulted my iPad and the map, so that we knew where roughly we were going. I gave Mr Tom (Tom) another chance, but didn't quite trust him any more. But actually, he was very helpful through the built up areas. Just using the map, or even written instructions, we would have been hopelessly lost.

We stopped at the Angel of the North while we were still carefee and not lost. What a fantastic sculpture!