I went by road to where my children are staying ( with their mum and Boyf ) yesterday.
It’s only 10 miles on the motorway… or apparently it’s less on the minor roads.
I opted for the latter – less chance of being squished, and surely more scenic!

Well you live and learn. Google maps doesn’t seem to work abroad, or at least not on my phone. It’s as though she thinks we are all driving clockwise around the roundabouts, rather than anti-clockwise as they do here.
So she’d say take the first exit, when I think she actually meant say the last one. As I can’t be looking at the map as well as ‘ driving ‘ I was doing what the voice said.
I must have gone wrong about 20 times. I had to reverse about 10 times down roads, as well as getting stuck in a lot of one way systems.
Honestly it was a shocker.
Eventually I ended up on a track that I recognised because I used to ride it often on my bike pre injury. Whilst I liked that familiarity, I also knew that 2 miles ahead I’d find it tricky to get past an obstacle.
True enough, when I got there, the obstacle was far more impassable than I thought. Well you do stuff on a bike and it looks one way, and then you see it from a wheelchair and it’s like a 6 foot wall that you can’t go over or under.
Two cyclists appeared and I pleaded with them to help. They did, and I then had to go above a mile on a golf course buggy track, which again completely confounded me. Buggies are wide and low, and don’t tip over easily. Me though, well I’ll tip easily and then I can’t get up again.
The poor cyclists had to push me for about 10 minutes. They were a Portuguese couple and very very kind. Without them I’d have been totally buggered.
I thought the trip would take 45 minutes. It took 2 and a half hours… and was horrendous to be honest.
BUT .. I got there and spent 3 hours with my daughter in a bar/ restaurant. She was her usual lovely self. It was sad to think that my other daughter was just a few hundred feet away, but didn’t come too… but I had to box up that thought and crack on, and it was great.
It was nostalgic, because I’d spent a lot of time in this place pre injury, doing all sorts of active stuff, and then lived there for 3 months ( 5 years after my injury when I had no other viable ‘ home’ option ).

The route back had to be on the BIG roads, because I’d used so much bloody battery getting there, that I had to go the ‘fast route’ back (despite having carried a spare battery )
It was touch and go battery wise returning on the big roads, but blimey it was a lot more straightforward, albeit slightly terrifying….

And I saw a friend in the bar too… lovely fella I know, called Bob.

So another kinda torrid event… but you know I just have to let these bad experiences go. Pre injury I’d have carried that with me at least all day… but now I can’t afford to. I get so many crap things happening to me, that I’d never go anywhere if I lived in dread.
So I don’t! 😅