Read the story and then watch the video if you want to see a confused me ignoring my instincts and blindly carrying on trusting the tech.
So, the plan was simple, I drive to one end of the Flitch Way in Braintree, cycle to the other end on a road route I had found, and then ride back to the start along the Flitch Way. A nice circular ride of around 33 miles, just perfect.
But things didn’t go exactly as planned. There is a very useful feature on my Garmin bike computer which offers to navigate to the start of an uploaded route. Not knowing where the start of this ride was, I said yes. The total distance only increased by a mile to 34 miles, which seemed reasonable.
However, as the ride got underway, I got the feeling that things were not right. The names on the road signs and the direction I was heading in made me feel like I was going the wrong way. “No problem,” I thought, “I’ll navigate to the start using the Komoot app on my phone”. And off I went again but in a different direction. I did contemplate going back to the start of the ride but decided to trust Komoot.
As I carried on riding, my Garmin finally picked up the route, and I switched off the Komoot app.
But, little did I realise that the distance shown on my Garmin was the distance to the start of the ride, not the total distance of navigating to the start as well as the planned ride as I had thought.
When I reached the end of the route, the station I arrived at looked nothing like the one where I had started out from. It was then that I realized I was at the wrong station – 24 miles away from my car. It’s easy to confuse Brentwood and Braintree, right?
It was starting to get dark, and the temperature was dropping, so I decided to take the train back to Brentwood instead of riding back.
The moral of this story is simple – if something feels wrong, trust your instincts. Always double-check your navigation tools and be aware of the distance you’re covering. And most importantly, always be ready for an adventure, no matter where it takes you.