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If you were going to, say, send a shuttle into space, you wouldn't ask a chef to design the spacecraft or work out the trajectory, would you, so why when we are making our way east back across mid-Wales does my husband give me the job of navigating?

I, who was in my mid-20s before I discovered that New Zealand was not a Scandinavian country, and who has difficulty finding my way out of a supermarket car park, believe it is not only better to arrive than to travel, but it is extremely fortunate to arrive at all, given my utter lack of sense of direction or scale, and when I do arrive anywhere for the first time regard it as a mini-miracle, before I start feeling anxious that the chances of ever finding the place again are remote. To me, almost everywhere is remote.

When I voice the thought that surely it would be more sensible to play to my strengths and, I'm about to add, "and let me drive,"he cuts me short and says that is exactly what he is doing, which is a cruel reference to the fact that before I got glasses a few weeks ago I often had trouble differentiating between people, bollards and in Wales, sheep on the road in front of me. I sigh, and look back at the OS map, which is a pool of green and blue with blurred lines until I realise that I've still got my driving glasses on, and quickly swap them for my reading glasses, so that the map becomes clear but the road signs ahead disappear into a blur, so I am unable to say whether we should be turning right here or going even further into the woods and hills.

The weird thing about mid-Wales is that there are loads of yellow roads that go past spectacularly pretty copses and villages and farms and then suddenly turn into tracks and peter out.

My husband relishes getting off the beaten track and seeing the countryside on our way to our next hostelry, while I'm more of an M4 girl, turning off on to the largest A-road I can find and then asking shepherds the way as the roads get smaller and having at least an hour longer in the bar before dinner.

However, I have given in today, and how we laugh when for the third time I run my finger over the route I think we're on and stare ahead hopefully only to find that we're on yet another no through road that ends at more Forestry Commission forest. Well, not laugh, exactly, but he valiantly attempts to smile gamely, for we are on holiday after all, and I simply turn away and laugh up my sleeve. Told you this wasn't a good idea, mate.

Tonight is the last night of our trip, and on our way back to England we're heading for a tiny hamlet called Whitebrook, which we know from experience is home to the best little restaurant with rooms in Wales. The fact that I've been there once before doesn't seem to help in navigating terms, though, and I manage to take us five miles too far upstream before we spot that we've overshot our turning.

"I was only following the brook," I argue, my finger firmly on a thick snake of blue on the map.

"God help us," mutters my husband, finding a tiny worm of a thing to the west, and sure enough when we actually reach the Crown at Whitebrook it is next to a small, bubbling stream rather than the wide expanse of water that turned out to be the River Wye.

Inside, after nine courses, with accompanying wines, I'm ecstatic, but as I look across the restaurant I wonder how I'm going to cross the room unaided. The combination of high heels and many wines is a deadly one. The chef, James, comes out to talk to diners.

I know my husband is thinking "I bet she can't find her way out of here on her own."

I'm thinking, I bet nobody ever asks James to design a spacecraft.

1:48pm Thursday 23rd August 2007

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