The Road to Hell

Driving back to Devon from London is usually a fun affair for me. Whether it’s cruising along the motorway with music blaring out of the speakers straight into my bloodstream or taking an enjoyable jaunt through the countryside taking in the sights I never believed it could be such an emotional rollercoaster. I must point out that the following account of events doesn’t involve a marauding psychopath posing as a hitch-hiker; I leave stories of that kind to the drab directors of horror movies in Hollywood. No, my venture was more of a melodrama. Think Jane Austen without all the bodices, staring only one person and set entirely in a Ford Escort and you’ll get the picture.

Leaving my friends house I followed my Sat Nav’s voice through Bracknell and toward the M25. I planned to head home on the M4 past Reading, onto Bristol and returning to Devon via first the M4 and later the A38. Forgetting it was Easter holidays however I immediately came to a stand still within ten minutes of my journey. I waited and then in a brash flush of optimism I pressed the alternative route button highlighting the ‘avoid M4.’ As my finger print smeared onto the touch screen it might as well of been printed on a murder weapon such was the ordeal that followed. I had put my life in the hands of a Sat Nav.

However, being directed towards the A303 I felt optimistic. The countryside whizzed past and I allowed a smile to tickle my lips. Soon enough I was singing along with the radio and laughing to myself at the cows in the fields. I was so content in my own little world I nearly hit the car in front. Panicking and swearing I realised that the car was at the end of a very long queue of traffic – my Sat Nav had betrayed me. I held my head in my hands. I was stopped just by Stone Henge, a beautiful part of the country completely stained by my own incompetence. Why had I trusted this stupid machine? I would never ever use it again. I took it off my windscreen and threw it into the glove compartment.

Two minutes later it was out and in my hand, my trembling fingers stabbing away at the touch screen hoping for a reprieve and a back lane off this road to hell. With Chris Rea popping up in my head I became delirious with rage and before I knew it I had ducked off the A303 and was heading towards Devizes. For the next two hours I existed in a maze of Somerset country lanes, I half expected David Bowie to pop out such was the labyrinth I enjoyed on my travels. I passed people in straws hats and isolated petrol stations. If you’ve ever seen Wrong Turn – a film where a group of ogres/zombies, I forget which, brutally murder a group of students who, you guessed it, took a wrong turn – you’ll sympathise with me when I say I genuinely feared for my life.

At every turn I looked for a way back to civilization a way out of the film set of Deliverance. It was whilst I was in this deepest ditch of despondency that I realised where I was. I was driving through the doughy folded fields and curvy lanes of Midsomer. The home of Detective Barnaby and Sgt Troy. The home of Midsomer Murders. All of a sudden my nightmare journey turned to one of unprecedented excitement. What if they were filming a new episode? Would I finally get to meet my hero John Nettles? My heart beat like a teenage boy’s who’s just seen a dirty magazine in the hedge outside his house. I saw a man approaching in the road. Was it him? Could it be?

No. It was a farmer telling me to go back the other way because they were moving sheep from one field to the next and a few had broken free. Finding myself in a new mood of happiness I suggested the sheep were conducting their own version of The Great Escape. Needless to say he didn’t laugh only shook his pitch-fork at me in a way that told me it was time to leave. With ten minutes I found myself back onto the main road. The traffic had subsided and as I passed through into Devon a smile coursed across my face. It’s strange how when we feel completely lost that’s when we find ourselves. As I pulled up to my house I recalled a tramp saying to me once. “When you stop looking for me, that’s when you’ll find me.” I think I finally knew what he meant.