My friends from Rome telephoned enroute. They had fed the GPS co-ordinates for Bellaugello into their iPhone 3GS and followed the given directions.
Why is it that satellite navigation systems have a very different way of navigating to the way we all think of navigating? I well remember when I lived in Scotland taking the dogs off to choose a new car. They got to choose the car, I got the choice of accessories… Of course among other luxuries there had to be a satellite navigation system. Oh what regrets, she did nothing but argue with me and continually attempted to have me turn round either in a one way street or on a dual carriageway, just because she thought she knew the route better than me. – Shame as I have a very good sense of geography and direction, and 99.9% of the time she was wrong.
Now this is not a sexist thing, yes the navigator had a lovely female voice, the guy’s voice was unappealing, I did have a choice, and I suspect the guy would have given the same nagging instructions.
Anyway the guys called up from Valfabbrica. Now Valfabbrica is a very pleasant Umbrian town but it is not on the direct route from Rome to Bellaugello, or so I thought… but iPhone navigator said YES IT IS!!
I had to think quickly and navigate for them from Valfabbrica to Valdichiascio. Quite easy really one simply heads for the ‘3Cs’ Casa Castalda, Carbonesca and Colpalombo. There is a back drive to Bellaugello that connects with Colpalombo, but it has one tricky turn and is longer on white road than the main drive in. What made matters worse is that the iPhone 3GS navigator had wanted to take the guys to Gualdo Tadino, again another very pleasant Umbrian town, but in no way enroute from Roma!! I scurried down the ‘strada secondaria’ and met the guys and brought them home here to Bellaugello.
It was a beautiful day and the hills were looking their best, so we lunched and chatted outside on the terrace, had a tour of inspection of the works progress and agreed to rewrite the navigation software, actually no we did not do the latter, that is a thing I could not begin to even contemplate understanding, instead I now know to give clear directions to anybody coming from Roma to ignore the smooth talking navigator and not turn off for Valfabbrica and Ancona but to stay on the E45 until Bosco.
I too have an iPhone and love it, but am a luddite and prefer navigating with a map.