I was once outside of Paris wandering, as you do just for the hell of it and eventually came to somewhere near Meaux about 50km away and reached the top of a village hill...walked down it and followed a track onto the canal and just carried on walking East. Problem was, foot travel in France has been made purposely awkward and after several long hours of walking with a 120lb backpack (in the middle of the hottest week of August) I found myself at the top of that hill in the village of the damned again having effectively walked just 50 feet.
It is almost like people in France purposely shove fences and canals (without bridges) and railway tracks (do you have any idea how scary it is running down one of those with a TVG close behind at 200mph is??!) in a hikers way just to be awkward lol
It wouldn't happen in England, you can walk from John O'Groats to Lands End if you wanted since public right of way laws have existed for centuries, but I am rambling off the pun (and point, but I am sure you got that already lol)
I do not generally worry about getting lost, for me the discovery of new and interesting stories and places is just too great to pass up to chance with a map.
If I did ever carry a map I would never get lost, my Geo-spacial skills are exceptional...it is part of probably my greatest talent.
Artros wrote:
I am also really bad at explaining how to get somewhere to someone else. I overexplain by a fair bit and I often find it difficult to put my mental memory of how to get from one place to somewhere else in words (strangely enough, routes are pretty much the only thing in which I am a visual thinker).
I am really bad at this too since I am forced to think in words and put myself into the mind of another person, I generally just send them off in the general direction of where I know it is with a familiar landmark (like a pub) and tell them to ask someone else from that point onwards. This morning in fact someone asked me for directions to the disused quarry mountain bike range (the council had it converted specially to protect the local country paths otherwise churned up to crap and give riders somewhere of their own to go) and though I know exactly where it is I spent ages trying to figure out left from right lol
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lanc ... 781229.stm