The problem with Pub Satnav

THE problem with most breakdown recovery crews, as I've discovered whenever a car of mine conks out, is that they aren't real ale enthusiasts.

This isn't about advocating drinking and driving, which is a stupid idea, but more about confused people in RAC and AA call centres not understanding how my internal satnav works, which leads to all sorts of confusion whenever I'm trying to get someone to come and rescue me. I am, I hate to admit it, someone who navigates almost entirely by pubs.

I realised this the other day, when I had to whizz between various points in West Lancashire on a list of Champion errands. I wasn't going from Ormskirk to Birkdale at all. I was driving from the Five Ways, past the Saracen's Head, towards The Crown. Depressing, isn't it?

Yet I know loads of people, particularly the ones in the biking fraternity, who seem to navigate using just popular drinking spots, even if it's ones they never actually frequent themselves. It's something my Champion colleague Jim Sharpe touched on a couple of months ago, when he suggested entire areas, like Old Roan, become so synonymous with a pub that they actually end up borrowing their names, but I'm going further than that. I'm talking about an entire network of internal TomToms preprogrammed with the names and exact location of pubs.

Take Burscough. To get there, I turn left at the Morris Dancers, head past the Heaton's Bridge, left by the Beaufort Hotel, and then towards either The Slipway or The Ship. If, like me, you have Pub Satnav preinstalled then you'll know exactly which set of roads I mean. But give me the directions in road names and numbers and I'm lost. Literally.

It's a great system for all sorts of reasons - you're never short of somewhere to stop for lunch, for instance - right up until the point when you have to give directions to someone who isn't an expert at Pub Satnav. That's how I ended up on the phone to a breakdown call centre in the middle of nowhere last month, struggling to get them to the B6261. That's where the Shap Wells Hotel is, but they didn't understand.

Do you suffer from Pub Satnav? I'd love to know, if you send in your thoughts to the usual Champion address at 166 Lord Street in Southport.

Which is just around the corner from The Guesthouse, incidentally.