Driving Lost Around Swindon
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012We spent last weekend driving round and round Swindon town centre (it’s in Wiltshire) completely and utterly lost. We were looking for a friends private party, they had hired out a hall and laid on a few nibbles, a disco and a party band (OK, I know this because we did eventually make it there).
The problem with driving in Swindon, is that whoever designed the road signs seems to have completely forgotten that it’s only people who live there who know what the local estates are called, the rest of us (or those who don’t have, or like in my case have a broken satnav) have to base our navigation on road names and numbers.
Swindon is so weird, as all but the major signs, only point to estates, which is absolutely no use to you if you don’t live there. I don’t know where the band came from, but they must have had a sat nav if they weren’t local, as otherwise they would never have had the time to set the PA and lighting rig up, then find time to sound-check before all the party guests arrived.
We actually missed almost all of their first set too, and judging by the second half, I expect that was good too, they played all types of music and had the dance-floor packed all night, with people bopping around. I must confess though, it’s funny that whenever I see a party band, it never fails to amaze me how everyone suddenly converts to doing their wedding dances.
Anyway, the point of this wasn’t to tell you how good the party was, or to harp on about the group who played (although they were good!), it was to warn people not to drive into Swindon without a map or a sat nav, or you may well end up driving into town, then back out, into an estate, then back into town again and the whole time keep finding yourself on the one way system around the town centre, at a point just past where you wanted to turn off, so have to go all the way round again.