31st March 2015 - There goes another month

Thought for the day: "I work in Hours and Minutes - I am no Second Hand Dealer!"

Off on the road again - this time, this time to get down to the South Coast.. and we hit our British Metz - BATH!!

Now Metz may not mean much to many people - it is a town in France. My knowledge of geography means that that about sums up my knowledge - but a few years ago we decided that we would drive across France and Germany to revisit the Tyrol in general, and the Pension Geisler near Innsbruck in particular.

It was a fairly special trip, ostensibly our 25th Wedding Anniversary back to the little hotel who never really believed that we were married when we went there on our honeymoon. Not surprising really as we weren't but being a good catholic country they probably would have put us in separate rooms had we confessed to holidaying in sin!!

No, we were returning to prove a point, and have a good holiday, oh... and I took my mother with us as she had visited the pension taking me as a child even more years before...

They remembered us and even put us in the original rooms - but that is a story for another time..

Meanwhile - back to Metz - and that was the problem - we could not get out of Metz.. It did not matter what road we took we found ourselves driving back into Metz... Susie was driving. We had no Sat Nav's in those days - not that Susie allows the use of another woman in her car under normal circumstances - but we had an AA devised route made for us to get us across the countries without going onto any autobahns - that was our decision. We would make the journey part of the holiday...

This worked well until we arrived in the town that must not be mentioned in our family...  Because though they say "All Roads lead to Rome" in actual fact they lead to Metz.... Or rather you cannot leave the town ... We tried - oh we tried!

We would leave on one road and follow the signs and then find that we were once more re-entering the environs....  Turn around and go back out and find that we were approaching fromt he South...  Not once, not twice - but several times - we managed to get several miles out only to find that we were once more in the streets of Metz...

We did get out...  obviously or I would not be able to write this treatise - but it took a long time and much frustration...  As I recall - we stopped looking for signs and local villages and towns - instead we picked the biggest town we could see that was a long way away - Strasbourg as I recall - only because we knew it was a long way away - and headed away from the source of all our problems ...

It was like achieving escape velocity - but finally we got onto roads that were not Metz - and not leading to Metz....

But Bath was almost the same. Having crossed the Bathampton tol bridge - who I may say did not advertise that you could not get south along the A36 - as it would rob them of their income... we moved up tothe Road Closed Sign..  It is a sign of the times that all the large notices now read "Turn off your SAT NAV" and follow Diversion Signs"  - so we did..  And they petered out . I think part of the problem was that they had closed some other roads as well so there were multiple road closures with different diversions for each - which did not help when you were just following the next sign...

Suffice it to say that we ended up in the wrong direction heading for Bristol in the opposite direction to that which we wanted. An hour later we had found another diversion sign and found our way into the centre of Bath again - just like a Metz!...

An hour and a half later we found some more signs and followed them and finally got onto our road....    but I do not like Bath any more - just saying !!