Lost in Yorkshire: Part One

IT WAS when Cheshire Constabulary's finest pulled up behind me that I realised walkie talkies would have been a good idea.

The idea was to head for the hills of North Wales, which you might have read about back in January, but what I hadn't mentioned was the massive cockup as we crossed the Runcorn Bridge. With our convoy split up in rush hour traffic, two of our team took the right lane and two the wrong one. This how I'd ended up parked on a bridge above the M56 with my hazards on, trying to explain to the local Plod how I was trying to spot a lost Mini Cooper on the motorway, which had only minutes earlier escaped the motoring Bermuda Triangle that is the Runcorn one way system.

Anyone who's ever organised a classic car run of any kind will already know what I learned that stressful day; that getting drivers to form a convoy and stick to it is like trying to herd cats. You can plan a route with military precision and offer up page upon page of pointers and directions, but if you're in a strange and unfamiliar corner of the country it's amazing how quickly a traffic jam, a set of roadworks or a confusing roadsign can right royally knacker things up.

So walkie talkies, at £20 a set plus the cost of some sticky tape, could be the best investment I've ever made.

Okay, so strictly speaking the Binatone Latitude 150 is actually a two-way radio rather than a walkie talkie, but more importantly it's as much a tool as it's a toy, as I'm hoping to find out this weekend on the way to the pretty city of York, on our latest adventure.

Some of my motoring mates are already hard at work, thinking of cheesy callsigns and pranks to play to break up the boredom of a three hour slog through the Dales, but what I'm really looking forward to is people having no excuse to get lost.

Will the entire trip disintegrate into a series of silly practical jokes? Will we end up completely lost in a small village somewhere near Settle? Will the sticky tape holding the walkie talkie last the drive out of Lancashire?

Tune in next week to find out...