All signs lead to somewhere other than Chipping Campden‏

The drive to Charingworth, near Chipping Campden

Thursday May 10, 2012

Well, that was a day. I left the B&B in Burford early, hoping to avoid the worst of the traffic. It should have been a simple drive - almost straight north with a left hand turn in toward Chipping Campden. I wasn't sure there would be a vacancy where I was hoping to stay, at Charingworth Manor, since no one had answered their phone the evening before.

It may have been a mistake to try to follow directions to the hotel since GPS's don't even lead to the right place according to their information. A GPS might have got me to Chipping Campden at least, which would have been a start. Somehow, I missed the turnoff and wound up north of the Cotswolds, off my map, and drove through/by Stratford-upon-Avon three times. I was north of Chipping Campden but didn't know by how much. Lost, and not knowing where I would stay that night, I was starting to envision sleeping in the car somewhere up in Scotland.

I stopped at a gas station - that's what Glenn would have done, and asked the fellow behind the counter how to get back on the map towards Chipping Campden. He didn't know! How can people who presumably live in the area not know where they are? A customer tried to help. It turned out that the two towns, Chipping Campden and Stratford-upon-Avon, are only 12 miles apart. I got lost again in a big roundabout, and had to stop for more directions. It was only when I got heading south that I finally saw a sign for Chipping Campden.

The town must be trying to keep its location secret because either its name is missing from nearly every road sign, or the signs are really tiny or I just plain missed them. How useful it would have been to have had another set of eyes along.

So, the trip that should have covered only about 25 miles, wound up taking me two and a half hours. In the comfort of my chair at home, it seems trivial but at the time the anxiety was exhausting.

This was the only time I filled the car with gas. The downside of the fun little Fiat was its awkward gas cap. The person at the car rental back in Oxford had to read the manual and still struggled with it.