Logging - Nick Spalding Page 0,41

owns a trac— a large thing powered by diesel, and likes to drive it around the B-roads of the Cotswolds at three miles an hour on a sunny Sunday afternoon in July.

Nevertheless, here I am, on a B-road (currently the B3134, but it’ll be the B3241 in no time, you’ll see) trying my level best to stay calm, consult my map and make it to the other side of the Mendips with enough time to drive the rest of the way to Weston.

At first, while my progress is slow, I do manage to make headway without too much of a problem.

There’s a hairy moment when a woman in a Nissan Juke nearly scrapes one bulbous wheel arch down the side of my driver’s-side door, but we both manage to slow down enough to give each other an awkward look, before going on with our stressful, B-road-travelling lives.

I only get stuck behind seven hundred and thirty-eight thousand cyclists as well, which is pretty good for a weekday afternoon.

There are no trac— big, fat, diesel-powered monsters, you’ll be pleased to know. I am spared that eldritch horror.

In fact, I’m starting to think I might just get through this situation intact and sane of mind, when something happens which brings my progress to a grinding halt.

I have pulled over in a gravel lay-by of the B3241 and am consulting the road atlas to see where I should go next, and everything looks clear and concise . . . until I turn the page.

Suddenly the atlas is no longer showing me the western side of the Mendips, but has decided to show me the roads to the east of Hull instead.

‘Thorngumbald?’ I say out loud to myself in the confines of the car’s cabin. ‘What the hell is Thorngumbald?’

For that is what I’m looking at, folks. A place called Thorngumbald. Which is close to the River Humber, and a good two hundred and fifty miles away from where I’m currently sitting.

I flick the road atlas back to the previous page.

Yep. There’s the Mendips, in all their Mendipian glory. When I turn the page I should be treated to even more Mendips. Nothing but Mendips as far as the eye can see.

But nope. I turn the page again. Thorngumbald.

One page Mendips. One page Thorngumbald.

Mendips. Thorngumbald.

West Country. Humberside.

Now, one of two things is going on here . . .

Either this road atlas is saying that right in front of me on the B3241 somewhere is an interdimensional portal that will instantly transport me from the south-west to the north-east, or when the atlas was printed it had some kind of serious problem that put the pages in the wrong order.

In feverish hope, I flick through the atlas to the pages that cover the north-east, praying that the Mendips has been transposed to that area – in a direct, unintentional swap.

Nope. More Thorngumbald.

‘Fucking Thorngumbald!’ I shout, squeezing the steering wheel tightly in one fist.

I’m sure Thorngumbald is a perfectly nice place, with welcoming residents who would certainly offer me a nice cup of tea and a biscuit – but right now I could happily see Thorngumbald blasted off the face of the planet if it would mean that I could have my Mendips back.

I need my Mendips!

What am I supposed to do without the map for them?

I’ll have to . . . gulp . . . rely on my own instincts.

Instincts that have been dulled by years of inactivity.

My sense of direction has been completely outsourced to Google Maps. What the hell am I supposed to do?

I have to get moving. The meeting is in an hour!

The B3241 was headed in a westerly direction – the direction Weston-super-Mare is in – so I’ll just have to keep driving along it, and hope it throws me out at the end of the Mendips and back into civilisation again.

With fear clutching at my heart (and a letter of complaint already forming in my mind, to be sent to the publishers of my not-so-clear-and-fucking-concise road atlas), I drive out of the lay-by and into the realms of the unknown.

Four hours later, I’m still in the Mendips, and it’s now starting to get dark.

My sanity has long deserted me.

There have been three tractors.

THREE.

Each one slower, larger and smellier than the last.

There have been nine hundred and forty-seven million cyclists. I have looked at more middle-aged men’s arses than a football stadium of proctologists.

The B3241 has become a snaking, unending path towards oblivion.

Any thoughts of the McGifferty’s Pies contract have long since