Get lost!

[summerdays]

I get lost, or explore new areas, regularly and deliberately. I see a lane and wonder where it goes, so, one way to find out, and down it I go. In reality, it isn't often you ride for more than a couple of miles or so without seeing a sign to somewhere to get you back on track.

That is what I do ... always on the look out for new routes ... and so within Bristol I doubt I could get lost for very long before I found somewhere I knew. I have a hopeless memory for things like people's names, birthday cards etc, but can come across a junction and remember that I've been there before and which way I went at it etc even if it was 10 years ago. So I'm usually the navigator in our car because I will be able to trace the route back without having to look at maps - though I enjoy looking at them.

It's possibly something to do with you attitude ... when I don't know a place I'm looking around absorbing ... working out how it fits with the bits I do know, I'm not worried that I don't know where I am, so I don't feel lost. Whereas if it was urgent that you got to your destination you would maybe be more likely to feel anxiety etc ... therefore Lost???

So properly properly lost .... I think that would be years and years ago.

 

[zacklaws]

If I plan a route more than about 5 miles using country lanes in an area that I have lived for over 50 years, I soon get lost as I cannot memorise the route or have the foggiest where a road will take me, but if someone said to me drive in my car to Portsmouth for example, about 300 miles away I would have no problem as I would just follow the major roads and head South, but on a bike down country lanes etc I would not have the foggiest.

The best investment I ever made was to buy a Garmin Edge, it revolutionised my cycling.

 

[steve52]

road from leicester to wisbech with a 18 mph tail wind 62 miles in 3 and a bit hours next day left form home a 18/20 mph headwind had ridden about 20 miles and realised i dint know where i was oh well sort it out at the next sign, EEK! it said wisbech 1 mile, i was so tierd i didnt even notice the head wind turn in to a tail wind , anyway one bonk and 6 hours later i limped indoors

 

[martint235]

I only seem to get lost when I trust my GPS. I carefully map the route beforehand, download it to the GPS and then the GPS rips up the route and takes me where it wants to go. Then I stop believing the GPS so the one correct left turn it points out I ignore and then I get lost.

Thankfully my sense of direction gets me out of these situations, I just cycle in what I believe to be roughly the right way until I see a road sign to somewhere I know.

 

[tyred]

Rarely. As I still live in the area I grew up in, I know all the back roads around here like the back of my hand.

 

[Matthames]

I have gotten lost a few times. I find in those situations a map comes in very handy, although using googlemaps on my phone can be misleading sometimes. Once I had taken the wrong turning to get out of Haywards Heath to head south to climb Ditchling Beacon. This took me in a direction I wanted to avoid due to the busy A road. There was this housing estate that on Google Maps looked like a cut through to get me back on track. However, when I got to the point where on Google Maps it shows a junction, I came across a dead end. The road I wanted was on the other side of a fence and down a 6ft embankment. Instead of cycling all the way back I decided to climb down this embankment to join this road.

 

[Davidc]

I only get lost in cities and large towns.

The countryside's no problem provided I have an OS map or of course know the area.

If I'm riding in the dark on roads I don't know I do usually take my Garmin Foretrex, which would give me a NGR if I needed it.

 

[palinurus]

I got lost on the way to work last week. I've only been commuting 22 years, going on 23.

(I have many routes, I was taking a back road that has been closed for six months but I've been ignoring the diversion and just riding past the barriers, only on this morning they'd finally started the work to repair the road and it was completely blocked off with a fence- I ended up riding through an awful gated estate and going round in circles)

 

[asterix]

I am never lost, I always know exactly where I am. My big problem is that I don't know where everything else has got to.

 

[Dave Davenport]

I'm pretty good at finding my way about and know the area within a 50 mile radius of home very well. The only time I do tend to end up off piste is getting out of larger towns when touring abroad, seem to end up on the wrong road about half the time.

It does amaze me when I'm leading a club run how many people seem to have zero sense of direction, some of them wouldn't have a clue where they were if you left them more than a couple of miles from home. All this reliance on GPS isn't helping imo.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

bikehike and a garmin etrex ended my getting lost, inadvertent detour, "I don't remember planning to cycle through here" days though sometimes, especially when cycling based away from home I adopt holistic navigaton; I may not get to where I want to go but I end up where I need to be.

 

[ColinJ]

I haven't got lost since I started navigating new routes with my Garmin Etrex in 2006. Well, strictly, I did get lost once but that was only I changed my mind about which route to take and switched the GPS off.

What I didn't realise was that somebody had turned the road sign I was following round to point the wrong way!

I only realised when I thought to myself "That looks more like Nuneaton than Coventry!"

 

[palinurus]

When touring I get lost:

Whenever I have to traverse a sizeable town.

Doubly so if I decide to try and use the local Sustrans route through it.

 

[Wobblers]

I get lost all the time! I seem to have a talent for it. Even with a Garmin I'll still manage to go the wrong way, as in the last audax where I managed to turn up at the first control only to discover it was the wrong one. Oops! Saying that I usually have a fairly good idea of the direction I need to go in, the Garmin's quite good at helping me work out which way to take. I'll get there, it may just take an extra "interesting" diversion or two. In fact, some of the best rides I've had is after getting lost and ending up in a completely unexpected location.

 

[Muddy Ground]

I once went home to the Midlands, had some drinks with my mates and found myself in Yogoslavia alone the next day.....