Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes—An Alternative Approach

Chris Johnson (again)

Editor: This article appeared in the June 2004 issue of TUG. Unfortunately I cannot find the GPS track image it refers to. This is actually no disadvantage, since it leaves you in a fog of geographical uncertainty, which is what this article is really about. ‘Stuart’ is Stuart Daniels, who re-joined EAMG not that long ago.

It was Easter Saturday, and the first social ride of the year; Chris & Gary's Super Sausage Run. It was also the first anniversary of the incident which led to my being publicly 'outed' by Chris Reed; I refer, of course, to my conspicuous lack of any significant navigational skills. I was determined that this year would be different. Firstly, I now carry a GPS mapping receiver (Editor: a primitive precursor of the SatNav) which shows exactly where one is with astonishing accuracy. Unfortunately the route for the ride was not announced beforehand so I couldn't program it into the unit and thus avoid the major weakness of GPS - knowing where you are only helps if you know where you ought to be. Secondly, I attached myself to Stuart's group. I have had great respect for him since the Fish & Chip run last year; this was a man who was not afraid to lay down a string of markers every ten yards on difficult intersections, block off roundabout exits with borrowed traffic cones etc. etc. He also plainly has great strength of character since his smile remained in place when he saw me drift over to his group, and his reflex flinch was almost imperceptible.

The pre-ride briefing was good. Apparently the only real problem might be at Milton Keynes. We were given full instructions which, on entering the left ear, encountered no significant obstacle and exited promptly from the right one, leaving only an echo which said that you turned left at a roundabout and then turned right at another one signposted A5. Since Milton Keynes appears to have been designed by someone who had a childhood fixation with spaghetti hoops, and consists of innumerable fea-

tureless roundabouts, I was going to be heavily dependent on good use of markers. The ride started. What can I say about it? We had motorcycles, there were roads, we rode along them. All went well until Milton Keynes.

In retrospect I know exactly what happened then, because the GPS unit tracks the route you take. There may, or may not, be a picture of the GPS route map attached to this article and it may, or may not, be legible. If it is, then we should have come up from the south at the right of the picture to roundabout A, turned left there, proceeded westwards until roundabout H, and then turned right towards the A5. The reality was somewhat different. At roundabout A the rider in front of me turned right with great selfassurance. This puzzled me slightly, since I felt sure that the first turn should have been to the left, but there was no marker before the roundabout and I was not going to strike out alone this year. His confidence seemed to evaporate fairly rapidly, and after a few hundred yards he stopped, made a U-turn, and we rode back ahead across roundabout A. Sure enough, on the exit road was a very bored marker who appeared to have been reduced to counting the number of dead insects on her(?) machine. With confidence restored we reached the next roundabout B, at which point the guy ahead got an attack of Star Trek bravado and, deciding to boldly go where no man had gone before, turned left. Those of us less familiar with voyages into uncharted Deep Space followed with some misgivings. At the next roundabout, undoubtedly reacting to long-range sensor detection of a Klingon battle cruiser, he made a diversion right, turned left at the following roundabout to resume a parallel course out of alien sensor range, and then suffered an apparent warp core failure and came to a halt at point C.

Our splinter group consisted of only 3 bikes, the leading Trekkie, a couple on something agricultural with a bulgy tank, and myself. A lively discussion ensued. I produced the GPS unit and could show the others exactly where we were; heading south from a roundabout at Milton Keynes. For some unaccountable reason this information was not received with the awe and respect which I had expected; the others feeling that all it told them was that we were lost, and they knew that anyway! The couple assumed command, the Trekkie having been temporarily unmanned by failure, and I have such a

terrible reputation that nobody would trust me to lead them to the beer at a brewery piss-up. The plan was to re-trace our steps and hope to encounter a scouting and rescue mission from the main group. They did a good job on getting us back to roundabout B, but then carried on north to point D. The couple stopped, had an animated discussion between themselves which I suspect I should be grateful for not hearing, and then it was a U-turn and back to our old friend roundabout B again. There we turned right and were actually back on the correct route again, although we did not know it.

After that everything went fine until point E, where the couple experienced what even the charitable would describe as an inexplicable loss of bottle. We backtracked to roundabout F and turned right to head in the wrong direction once again. The apparent simplicity of the GPS track does not really do justice to the magical mystery tour which we then seemed to follow. I can remember at one point seeing a sign for "A5 Dunstable". A5 was good but was Dunstable north or south of Milton Keynes? We eventually went ahead over roundabout H and were now back on the official route. I would like to say that our problems were over but in fact we chickened out and turned back again a couple of hundred yards short of the Super Sausage Café. This, however, was soon sorted out. The rest of the day was, navigationally, without major incident..

Stuart, with the red trimmed jacket, and my Blade in its youth