On a trip away for the weekend, my friend (I shall call him John for the purposes of this story) programmed his sat nav with the postcode of his hotel. The address on screen came up as No. 1 Castle Hill and so since his hotel was on Castle Hill (and just had a name and not a number) he was happy he was going to the right place and set off.
He’d been on the road a couple of hours and suddenly the sat nav told him to cross over a major road junction that he had just arrived at. He thought it a bit odd, as he had half an idea that the hotel was off to the left, but the sat nav said straight on and so that’s what he did. He kept following the instructions and finally, around half an hour later, the smug voice*1 of his sat nav said ‘you have reached your destination’. He found himself outside a tall imposing wall, looked up (and up and up) and found himself looking up at Windsor Castle (Castle Hill presumably) “Blimey”,. he told me, “I thought I was going to a posh hotel, but I didn’t think it was that posh!”
Turns out that he had transcribed the numbers in the postcode (which in this country are 2 letters followed by 2 or 3 numbers and 2 more letters) from something like 856 to 865 and that’s how the error had occurred. Well, he was almost as red as a tomato….
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