Sunday 14th February 2016

The only way is (north) up! PH Blog

Battle lines need to be drawn between the direction of travel wanderers and true north fundamentalists!

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How do you have your navigation screen set in your car?

Think carefully before answering.

Direction of travel? North!

I like to think of myself as a generally tolerant chap. And in all other respects my relationship with PHTV co-host James is a good one. But I find one element of his personality a perpetual disappointment.

He's a direction of travel man.

I find this odd. Because he's generally a sound, no-nonsense kind of bloke. And I bet if I gave him a proper map he'd do what real men do, hold it upright and use spatial awareness and a sense of direction to understand north is up and everything else relative to that. Not stand on a street corner turning the map round and round, scratching his head looking like some sort of confused tourist.

And yet every time we swap cars there it is - nav set to direction of travel or, worse, 3D direction of travel. He claims this is because he's 'a modern gentleman' in touch with technology. I say he's directionally confused. Or, as a Surrey boy, just scared of the north and a bit jittery beyond his current home in the midlands.

Boo, hiss, etc...

Practical evidence of the evils of direction of travel navigation was revealed to me the other week travelling from Silverstone to near Telford. In my head I knew roughly I needed to head north-west across country to the M40, north, west a bit on the M42, pick up northbound M5/M6 and then west along the M54. I could picture it in my mind clear as day but had the nav on to get me to my final destination. My downfall was trusting the machine to sort the route out and get me there. But the JLR nav in the Range Rover locks to direction of travel when a route is programmed. And by the time it had me in a circle of despair somewhere around Bridgnorth it was too late to do anything about it.

I'll accept I might, possibly, be displaying some stereotypical northern belligerence here. So let's have it out - north up for the win or move with the times and the direction of travel?

Dan

 

[Fury1630]

Direction of travel (obviously). If I look at a map I put north up, but a satnav it not a map (you can tell when you try to fold one).