Not Where Two Rivers Meet

Where Two Rivers Meet - - ah, what an evocative title. Rowing boats and water voles. Summer meadows full of buttercups. The distant splashing of oars. Picnics and shady woodlands. Ducks quacking.

Unfortunately, that's not where I was today. I was Where Two Motorways Meet. Entirely different.

I was on my way back from doing some work with medical students in Hull: I was at Ferrybridge Services.

I called in there because there were traffic jams ahead of me - so the radio told me - so I thought I'd stop there and eat until the traffic cleared.

I've had problems with Ferrybridge before. They're at the junction of the M62 and the A1 and as soon as I pulled off the M62 I remembered that I'd done something horribly wrong last time, but I couldn't remember what it was.

Then I did it again.

There's a huge roundabout, and the services are one of the turnings off it. So I drove round the roundabout peering at every sign as I passed - one wrong move here and you're in London, or Manchester, or back in Hull - and I found the sign for Services.

But as soon as you turn down it there's a tiny picture of the world's smallest motor car to the left, which I drove past thinking to myself hey, that must be the world's smallest motor car.

Just as I did last time. For if you happen to be in a motor car yourself - and I was - you have to turn left immediately - like I didn't - or you end up in an impenetrable mass of huge lorries driven by men eating Yorkie bars - like I did.

And can you get from the lorry park to the car park? No, you cannot. You have to go out again and round the huge roundabout, peering at every sign - - yes, it was Groundhog Day.

I'm telling you now, to save me the trouble of doing it later, that I'll do this next time too. I don't learn things like that. I don't do that spatial-relations stuff (careful now).

But still, when I got there it was a delight.

Oh, you know already that it wasn't. It was this:

Almost deserted, all the hot food dried up and with a feeling of last-chance-saloon about it. It was the Service Station at the End of the Universe, all right.

Still the traffic had cleared by the time I left and I did just a couple more circuits of the big roundabout for old times' sake before taking the correct turning for Leeds. The sign above me said "Gritting". I think when people say "I love to travel" they possibly don't mean the kind of stuff that I do.