As the Wind Blows

Want to keep your brain active and alert? Want to prevent Alzheimer’s? Forget about brain training and Sudoku, just grab a (sketchy) map of the UK, jump in a car and find your way to your next destination! Okay, so I shouldn’t have expected that the ‘A to Z of Great Britain Road Map’ would have every single road in every single little town in the UK, but it should have!! They can’t expect us to buy a detailed map at every town we visit, because number one, we wouldn’t know where to buy the maps from because the less than detailed map doesn’t tell you where to find them. Hertz should really offer GPS navigation with all its car hire.

I know that ‘half the fun is getting there’ and ‘it’s journey and not the destination’ that matters, but whoever came up with those sayings didn’t spend two hours driving around in circles in Coventry, with Blue’s ‘I can’ stuck in their head, and somehow always ending up driving through the dodgy part of Coventry where large groups of people roamed the street. At least the next day when driving around in circles trying to find our way out, we did stumble across the nicer part of Coventry and the dodgy part wasn’t as crowded in the morning. I’m sure Coventry’s a nice place, but it was such a relief to get out of the city that didn’t seem to want to let us leave!

We drove through Leicester, which looked like a larger version of Fyshwick except with a castle, and decided to stop for lunch at Nottingham; a laid back city again with a castle somewhere about. Needless to say that there are quite a few castles around Great Britain and that was one thing the vague roadmap of the UK made sure it informed us of. No doubt the locations of castles are more important to the British than finding a place to rest at night. . .

Anyone who wants to visit Sherwood Forest should note that there’s not much of it left. A lot of it has been destroyed due to logging and farmland, so research locations to visit and take your time making your way through this part of the country otherwise it’ll be over all too soon.  We stopped at a church which was supposedly where Robin Hood was baptised and drove through little villages that supposedly had some connection to Robin Hood as well as driving through the Sherwood Pine Forest and the Thieves Wood. Sherwood Forest itself, well what’s left of it, is quite lovely and you can just picture Robin Hood and his merry men running through the trees.  At least for that part of the trip we didn’t require a map because stopping and asking for instructions is an old fashion yet effective technique for finding your way to your destination.