“LANFYANGELLYYCROITHNNN,” I said. “Or something like that anyway.”

The dog looked at me askance. The driver said nothing.

I’m not the world’s best navigator – although I’m very good at pointing out which turn we should have taken at any given roundabout as we zoom off on a road to Somewhere Else, which of course will have no opportunities for turning round for at least 10 miles.

But navigating in Welsh is altogether more challenging, as I attempted to get my tongue round all those consonants.

So it is with some pride and perhaps a tinge of smugness that I managed to negotiate some dodgy route finder instructions and a road map and get us all the way to a tiny village (Llanfihangel y Creuddyn) in a tiny Welsh valley just outside Aberystwyth. And back.

Which is when my problems began.

The driver lives in Stroud and was toasting my brilliant navigational skills with such gusto I had to get a cab to Stroud station.

A phone call to a local cab firm resulted in a rather grumpy taxi driver telling me I couldn’t order a taxi for 6pm because he would be busy then. He’d be there in seven minutes, he told me. I protested and he agreed to give me another three minutes. Hastily I gathered my belongings thinking ‘surely the point of a taxi firm is you book them when it suits you, not the other way around?’.

So I spent a sunny but dull 40 minutes on Stroud platform waiting for the encouragingly punctual train.

Half an hour later, glorious Swindon lurched into view. And remained tantalisingly so for another 44 minutes as we sat in full view of the old railway works while a nervous sounding train manager occasionally popped up on the tannoy saying a train had broken down at Swindon station and he couldn’t tell us when we’d be moving ‘but it could be a while’.

Which was worrying to say the least, for the last time I’d been stuck on a train was when Oxford station was out of bounds because the wind was blowing in the wrong direction or the station master couldn’t find his Kitkat or something.

That time I was dispatched instead to Reading where I could have got a train direct to Swindon, but I had the wrong type of ticket and therefore had to wait an hour to get a train to Didcot so I could get a train to Swindon. I did point out to the man in the fluorescent vest on the platform that it was the train firm’s fault I was in Reading, not mine, but he pointed out that it was my fault for not having a ticket that permitted travel via Reading.

Anyway, my trip down memory lane was interrupted as the train finally juddered back into motion and we arrived into Swindon. Home at last. Almost.

Jumping into a cab at the station, home was in sight and, despite the irritation of whirling round Whalebridge and getting stopped at the lights twice (why? Why? Bring back the roundabout for god’s sake), we made it up to Victoria Road without any further ado.

The fare was £5.70. I produced a twenty pound note. Which was clearly foolish.

The driver stared at me as though I’d pulled a mongoose from my bag and was attempting to pay with that. “He’s nice. He’ll grow on you. He’s really no bother.”

“Haven’t you got anything smaller?” he said.

“No,” I said. I’d spent all my gerbils in the pub at lunchtime.

And he continued to stare at me as though sooner or later I’d admit I’d been lying. Again he asked if I had anything smaller. Again I said no.

And I watched as he churlishly took my note, got out of the cab and started going into shops asking for change. While I was locked inside his cab.

Now call me crazy but if you’re a taxi driver, or a shopkeeper, or a publican, isn’t there this traditional piece of mind-blowing brilliance called ‘a float’, wherein you have notes and coins of various denominations in order to provide hapless customers like me, who don’t have anything smaller, their change?

Eventually some kind soul used some of their change to give the taxi driver his change so he could give me mine, so it all worked out well in the end.

But having navigated via numerous unpronounceable villages along a winding mountain road in Wales it struck me as curious that the most difficult part of the journey was a half hour train journey and a five minute taxi ride.

No wonder as a nation we’re so dedicated to our gas guzzling cars if this is how hard it is getting around without them. Chwerthinllyd.

  • I’D like to say thank you to the tree surgeon who popped his card through my letterbox the other day.
    But I’d like to offer him a word of advice. Perhaps try leafleting houses with gardens?
    You see, I don’t own so much as a blade of grass, let alone a tree. You could have a go at the begonia if you like. I did contemplate nipping up to the Town Gardens and nominating a tree for elective surgery just to give you some trade but thought I might be arrested.
    You see, it’s easy to see who has gardens these days, just go on Google Earth.
    Presumably you delivered to everyone else in my street and they don’t have gardens either. And if you paid someone to distribute your cards for you, I’m afraid you’ve been had.
  •  PEOPLE think being a journalist is quite exciting as jobs go. And it certainly has its moments.
    But I reckon it’s not a patch on being a research scientist. I awoke yesterday to hear the news that researchers at Cambridge University have discovered that baboons queue for food.
    Bottom baring aside, what a polite and civilised species they are.
    And what a job. I have visions of nipping into Tesco on the way to work to pick up some crumpets and jam before heading to the office to wait for an orderly queue to form. Next, please!