Top Travel Leads

Sat Nav 1 Chelsea 0

Once upon a time, Earl Spencer’s daughter had tickets to go and watch the London Derby, Chelsea v Arsenal. Her taxi arrived and her driver typed ‘Stamford Bridge’ into his sat nav and off they went. The journey was taking a little longer than expected, and after much deliberation they arrived in a small village outside York- 230 miles away from the real Stamford Bridge, where Chelsea were playing. Needless to say, they missed the match.

Ho Ho Ho… All the way to Lille

A group of Christmas shoppers from Gloucester decided that Lille (France) was the ideal place to find their loved ones perfect gifts for Christmas. A coach load of them headed to Lille, but started to have concerns when they saw road signs for Eindhoven, which is in the Netherlands. The coach driver insisted he was on the right tracks, but unfortunately he’d picked the wrong one of two ‘Lilles’ that had shown up on his sat nav. The shoppers only managed to get 2 hours shopping time in before they had to return to the UK. Shame it cost them £150 each to get there…

£96,000 Down the Drain (or Swollen River)

On her way home from a Christening, this woman got more than she bargained for while following instructions from her sat nav. The sat nav instructed her to follow some pretty dodgy country roads, only used by farmers in their 4×4’s. Instead of turning back, the woman kept on driving in the same direction until her £96,000 Mercedes sports car got caught up in a swollen river due to heavy rain on the previous days. The electric soon blew, forcing the windows to open and creating a dangerous scenario for the driver who couldn’t get out. A local villager came to her rescue. Unfortunately, the car was written off. Lesson to be learned: Always use common sense when using a sat nav!

Long and Winding Road

A Swiss man learned to use common sense when using his sat nav the hard way- he followed directions from his trusty GPS system all the way up a goat track, half way up a mountain. His van then got stuck on a tricky corner and had to be rescued by helicopters. Although he realized he was lost, he continued up the goat track until he realized there was no way forward (or backwards). He was later applauded for being able to get that far up the mountain via a goat’s footpath.

Choo Choo

A 20 year old student had a near miss when her sat sav directed her to a metal gate. Convinced that her sat nav was giving her the correct route, she opened the gate and drove onto a railway line. To her horror, her Renault Clio got stuck right in the middle of the track and couldn’t be moved in time. The student had to stand back and watch as a train smashed into her pride and joy, which couldn’t be saved from the brutality of the passing train. Realizing that sat navs can actually make mistakes, the student from Redditch told the Daily Telegraph, ‘I’ll never use a sat-nav again’. The phone call to moneysupermarket.com must have been an interesting one.

Drive like a Royal

One lucky person who bought a Jaguar from an auction ended up with more than they bargained for. The Jaguar happened to be previously owned by the Duchess of York, complete with a sat nav. The Duchess obviously isn’t as safety conscious as she should be as she left the address of her and her two daughters in the sat nav, as well as the post codes of their favourite places to go. Note to ones self- always clear your sat nav history before selling ones sat nav!

Tips for using Sat Navs

1. Check what you type- it’s so easy to put a ‘0’ instead of an ‘o’, or an ‘I’ instead of a ‘1’. Like our taxi driver friend who ended up in York, you could end up 100’s of miles away from your destination.
2. Keep your sat nav updated. By hooking your sat nav up to your PC you can update the GPS data to make sure you have the most current information. Buildings and roads change all the time, so don’t be caught out.
3. Don’t make the same mistake that the Duchess of York made- never type in your home address as a destination. If you sat nav were to be stolen it would make it easy for thieves to track you down.
4. Never leave your sat nav in your car. Sat navs are appealing to thieves because of their price tags. Always take store your sat nav out of the car when you’re not using it.

Whatever your next travel plans might be, utilize the help of a useful tool called TripIt. It saves the details of your trip and may come in handy should you lose your tickets or information regarding your travel arrangements and may need to contact the carriers you booked with in order to retrieve the particulars of your travel. In other words, TripIt is a website where you save all your travel reservations and notes you might have made.

To get started with TripIt, you add details of your upcoming trip, its destination and outline of the itinerary, dates of travel, a description of your plans, notes and reminders you wish not to forget. If your trip starts with a flight, you add a flight, or whatever is the first segment of your journey. You enter date, airline, and flight number, or simply only the reservations code and TripIt retrieves the details so you don’t have to enter them. And from here on you add all other travel arrangements you have made, whether booked with airlines, ground transportation providers, made train reservations, hotel reservation, as well as arrangements that were made for you by travel agencies. The beauty of TripIt is that it accepts confirmation emails from over 500 booking sites, and here is a list of them: http://www.tripit.com/uhp/supportedVendors. Once your arrangements are saved you can come back and edit any part of them, see where your travel plans may overlap, find notices regarding schedule changes as well as updates on weather.

The best part is you can share your trip arrangements with your family and friends and they can keep track of where you are and what you are up to.

China Travel offers free travel tools to China, such like China train search. This is only a tool for searching China trains, China Travel does NOT provide train tickets booking services. Choose from the major stations in China to search for trains between them. If you can’t find your station from the drop-down menu, refer to Search Trains between two of China Train Stations List. Note data is updated regularly but train schedules change without notice.