"Clive George" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 02/02/2016 12:06, T i m wrote:

Now, if you don't actually crawl out from under your stone very often
or aren't someone who likes doing stuff in the moment, 'planning' a
route 3 weeks in advance could be considered the fun bit of any trip
(till the first road closure of course). ;-)

I don't use a GPS, and route planning when driving involves getting in the
car, looking at the map and then going. It never seems to be that hard -
even when crossing countries. Granted I normally have a navigator, but I
don't do too badly without one as well.

Depends whether you have the memory of a goldfish or not! I have never been
the sort of person who can look at a map and memorise a route (eg sequence
of road numbers and junctions) for a long journey. I usually write down the
key junctions and stick it on my dashboard to refer to.

My wife has always suffered from car sickness so has found it difficult to
read a map in a car, so her "coping strategy" was to "teach herself" (how?)
to memorise a whole journey - she says that she can "see" the picture of the
map in her memory and can check turnings as she goes without needing to look
at a real map Quite a skill!

Satnavs are very useful - either for giving you turn by turn instructions
which you follow blindly (though still checking that you don't drive into a
river just because "the satnav told me to", or else to show you your current
location on an OS map so you can make up a route as you go, with the benefit
of always knowing where you are and how far to the turning that you want to
take.

Satnavs are great for giving you the confidence to take roads that you'd
never otherwise take for fear of getting lost in the of nowhere and thinking
"where am I?".