Byline: DAVID WILLIAMS
IT WAS spooky. Heading for a rented cottage in a remote part of Exmoor, we had put our faith in the Volvo XC90's talk-youhome satellite navigation system. And, after following the verbal instructions for half an hour, the signs were not encouraging.
Forsaking the cottage owner's printed instructions, we veered off along a network of unmarked lanes zigzagging between fields and craggy moorland in the gathering evening gloom.
With mud covering the road and steep, slippery inclines we were glad to have the reassurance of four-wheeldrive.
Even gladder of the antilock braking and car-like handling when a deer broke cover and dashed across the road - now pitch black - silhouetted by the powerful Xenon headlights.
Consulting the road atlas was hopeless; it didn't even mark the obscure hamlet we were aiming for, nor the road we now found ourselves on.
Then - just as we were considering heading back to civilisation to follow the instructions after all - the blue triangle stopped moving across the illuminated navigation screen on the dashboard.
"In 250 metres you will arrive at your destination."
Oh yeah? There wasn't a building in sight.
We carried on until we were in a narrow lane utterly devoid of features other than two high hedges. The voice announced: "You have arrived at your destination."
And there, illuminated in the headlights, was a marker post at the roadside - bearing the name of the cottage.
It seemed to us at the time miraculous, although it was no easy job programming the address.
As with most satnav systems, you usually tap in the address. But, like many country locations, the cottage was so remote that the road had no name, making that impossible.
You can use the postcode, but as it only takes the first few digits, this narrows the address down to an impossibly wide area.
The next option is pretty neat: you "fly" a gun-sight crosshair across the electronic map with the cursor until it's over your destination, before hitting "enter". But it is difficult to narrow down precise locations and there is always the risk of directing yourself-into a boggy field. The last option is to enter latitude and longitude coordinates - but how do you find those?
The solution was a combination of low and high-tech.
I plotted the Ordnance Survey coordinates on a walking map (it was, after all, a hiking weekend) and entered the six-figure references into a helpful new website that the people in the OS press office told me about.
It transformed them into latitude and longitude, et voilc - the holiday cottage.
I put it to Volvo that it would be helpful if its system was OS-compatible in the first place; they said that in common with other manufacturers this would be no use outside the UK and as the cars are sold worldwide they need uniformity; hence lat and long.
CLEARLY, though, the market for satnav is growing exponentially in the UK; it should surely be big enough to be worth someone's while to develop software that uses co-ordinates we can all find with relative ease.
The Volvo is a fine piece of engineering and was ideal for our muddy, lads' weekend away, proving equally at home in fords and bogs as on the M4, and carrying a mountain of gear as well as a dog.
But even the [pounds sterling]33,085 SE version I was driving doesn't come with access to the internet - and that OS site.
Surely there's a gap in the market for some clever entrepreneur out there who can devise a solution that will tap into this growing market and revolutionise satnav in 2005?
Meantime, if you're fortunate enough to have a navigation system and you're heading out into the wilds, you can find that Ordnance Survey site at http://www.gps.gov.uk/ natgrid/introduction.asp.
Get your motor runnin'-
MIKE Seat's Choppers: Heavy Metal Art, published by Motorbooks, [pounds sterling]24.99, takes over where Raleigh and Easy Rider left off (writes Barney Waylen). Choppers are artistic and mechanical statements in the form of unique motorcycles, powered almost invariably by heavily modified Harley-Davidson engines, although they may never turn a wheel. Why and how they are made are explored.
Michael Lichter's excellent photographs allow you to see the diversity of the exquisite engineering, painting and design of the best, as well as their sheer elegance and beauty. You may love or loathe choppers, but keep an open mind until you've read this book.
Bzzz!
Keep your eyes on the road LOSING concentration? Not if you're in a Saab. The company is developing a safety system that monitors eye and head movements; if you are gazing in the wrong direction for more than two seconds a loud buzzer goes off. Ideal for pavement-life watchers in London.
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