OUTPUT

At the end of my drive there's a sign which gives the name of my farmhouse. It's right up by the main road and clearly visible to drivers. But, without fail, people visiting or delivering goods to my address get lost and end up having to phone me for directions.

If drivers trouble themselves to look for signs, and follow their instructions, there would be little problem in locating my home. These days, though, we are so totally dependent on the wonders of GPS and in-car satellite navigation systems, that we tend to allow our visual means of finding where we're going to be dominated by Janet or Daniel's verbal direction skills. If we stray from their opinion, after being told our journey is being recalculated several times, we learn that we most certainly have not arrived at our destination.

I confess to being a total convert to my satnav and I like to think it makes me a better driver because I'm not constantly having to be distracted by signs and directions stuck on a post at the side of the road. My own version of this small chunk of technology also dings violently at me if there are speed cameras hiding in the bushes and is kind enough to make sure I'm in the right lane at junctions and roundabouts.

But our dependence on GPS has now made us so complacent that we tend to ignore the signs and displays used on our highways and back roads. Although these are designed to assist us on our travels, we allow the power of our satnav systems to override conventional notices.

Worse, many of the carefully produced and often ornate signs placed on gates and properties are paid scant attention because we think that our navigation system means that we don't have to scour streets, country lanes and industrial estates. Instead we'll be given accurate instructions which announce when we've arrived.

Where I live, you have to read and follow the road signs or (depending on the make of unit) your satnav will either take you to a farm a mile away or you'll be directed into a ditch overgrown with stinging nettles. Part of the responsibility must lie with the Post Office database of postcodes and how accurately these are represented on computerised devices. But the onus is also on us, the motorists, to use a bit of common sense.

It seems hard to believe that, in the days before satellite navigation and mobile phones, anyone succeeded in accomplishing a journey in a satisfactory fashion. Back then we had to follow road signs precisely to get from A to B.