Lost in Bucks (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Lost in Bucks

10:03am Monday 18th August 2008

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I’ve been down south, and it’s not actually too bad.

That independent think tank that urged Bradford, Liverpool and Sunderland to shut up shop and ‘emigrate’ down south may have been way off their collec-tive trolley, but there is some-thing fairly decent about some of the place.

We were visiting relatives in the rural setting of Bucking-hamshire, and very pleasant it was too, even when my ‘local’ brother-in-law guide got us completely lost on the bikes!

A very pleasant farmer gently informed us on one forest track that it was , in fact, not for pub-lic access, but we could carry on to the old railway line bri-dleway seeing as we’d come so far.

Then we took another wrong turning, tried to cut back ‘off piste’ and ended up first in a hillbilly-looking farmyard, then a deep forest with no dis-cernible tracks, then a fallow field where I was sure I would hear the crack of gunfire at our wheels any moment and a cry of "Get orrff moi laand!"

Fortunately it took us back again to the railway track, and home to a welcoming can of beer… and a "where the hell have you been?" from the wait-ing wives.

I wish I could have told them.