Driving in Devon

In the Midlands your driving may be influenced by the odd pothole, but at least you are generally on what can reasonably be described as roads. I got a shock visiting Devon on holiday.

Therefore in the interests of public safety I feel it is essential to publish these essential tips for anyone deciding to turn right after they reach Bristol.

1. Leave your satnav at home.
   
   After years of shunning this 21st century technology I am now a fan of my TomTom, which is very reliable and especially useful when driving without a passenger to navigate. But in Devon it sent us along mile after mile of tiny single-track lanes bordered by towering 3-meter high hedges and/or walls, thus adding hours onto the most simple of journeys. How these insignificant tracks can be mistaken for roads defeats me.
   
   Using a map you may have to go round 3 sides of a rectangle to stay on proper roads but it will be much faster and infinitely less stressful.
   
2. Don't leave the Valium at home
   
   The above-mentioned lanes boast "passing places" (i.e. very slight bulges in the lane - say, 50cm ish), but only every half mile or so.  After one very hairy 400m blind reversing exercise, a (very) near head-on miss with a 4-wheel drive, and one particularly challenging mile where I swear the vegetation was slapping BOTH sides of the car at the same time I had quite had my fill of Devon roads.
   
   It doesn't help that, away from the rare-to-the-point-of-almost-extinct dual carriageways, no roads in Devon are straight - apart from the one that runs along the shingle bar at Slapton Sands, the geometry of which is determined by geology rather than man. So you generally don't know what's going to hit you until the last second. To walk, run or cycle along these lanes is to express an extreme form of deathwish.
   
   Even on an A road you can suddenly find yourself plunged from sunshine into the darkness of a dense wood just exactly at the point where the road randomly narrows from a comfortable 2 lanes to a frightening one-and-a-half.
   
   I've driven on roads in south-western Ireland where this happens at the point where the EU funding ran out. Perhaps Devon County Council could look for some similar funding and bring their roads at least into the 20th century?