Wandering Aimlessly

I don't often feel s if I am totally lost, but today was one of those times.  When I say 'lost', I mean literally lost, as in having no idea as to where I was or how to get back to my car.  Actually, I knew where I was generally: some woods in the New Forest.  But somehow, in the course of a walk there, I managed to get completely turned around and lost my sense of direction.  I spent hours walking around paths that all looked the same.  When I exited the woods at one point, I thought that, with the aid of Google Maps, it would be easy to find my way back to the car park.  But the app lied to me, failing to get right the fact that I had exited on the opposite side of the woods and was now walking toward the wrong road.  Cutting back through the woods, I got tangled up in its maze of paths once again, given more bum steers by Google Maps.  I eventually found myself at an exit gate next to a cottage and figured that the road back to the car park had to be nearby.  Luckily it was and I followed it back to the car.  Even then, my trauma wasn't over - I reached what I thought was the right car park, but no car.  I then realised that this wasn't the car park where I'd left it - it was another one less than half a mile from the right one, but wasn't marked on Google Maps, just to confuse idiots like me.  

So, what's the moral of this sorry tale?  Well, don't trust Google Maps in relatively isolated non-urban locations, is one takeaway, I suppose.  Another is just how much we rely upon unique visual stimuli to navigate - the problem is that when you find yourself in a forest full of fir trees and gravel paths, everything looks too much alike for anything to stand out as a recognisable landmark from which to take bearings.  There were times when it felt as if I was walking around in circles, as if the paths were bending back on themselves to trap me in some kind of creepy maze, so indistinguishable was one stretch of path to another.  Even the junctions between trails looked identical.  It was all very perplexing.  The most annoying aspect was that if Google Maps hadn't sent me off in the wrong direction, then I would at least have reached that cottage and the road at least an hour earlier.  Anyway, the ultimate outcome of all this has been to make me vow to avoid walks in unfamiliar woods altogether in future.  When I head back down to the New Forest later this week I'll go to the coast - that's easy to navigate to, you just stop when you see the water, then go n the opposite direction to get back home - just keep going inland and you are bound to get there eventually,  Who needs Google Maps or Sat Navs?