The trouble with TomTom is that — from time to time — it can lead you into all kinds of interesting situations. Here's a case in point. We'd been out for the day castle spotting in Northumberland, and were heading from Etal to Warkworth. Now as we came through Alnwick (full marks to TomTom so far by the way), we weren't able to go along the High Street, so we diverted via Denwick, rather than heading down to the A1068. Now, you see that minor road leading down from Denwick to the 1068? That's where TomTom told us to go. So we went.

It started off fine — narrow, I'll grant you, but fine. But as we got down to the bottom of the road, the last mile or so looked like this:

200 m to the junction, originally uploaded by Martin Burns.

Let me offer you a close-up...

But, it's not icy, we have reasonable ground clearance in the Touran, and it's a long way reversing back to somewhere we can turn around. And at this point, it's only 200m from the junction. So we keep going.

But when we get back onto a real road, the car's struggling, and we hear an odd noise, so stop, and take a look-see. And look and see:

Which lead to an interesting wait in the middle of nowhere (actually, in the car-park of these guys, who kindly let us use their phone, their loo etc), while waiting for Green Flag to pick us up. And take us next day to Kwik Fit who charged us nigh on £200 for 2 new tyres.

So, thanks for asking, I had a bit of a Curate's Egg of a birthday.