seasonal SUV's and sat-navs
I live in Cornwall, in the south west of the UK. It's a part of the world that, as far back as my own memory can go, has been one of the most popular places to visit for a holiday in the country. We are now getting towards the peak of the full tourist season, when the population of Cornwall is at least doubled over the summer school holiday months as sun-seeking and beach-bound families swarm all over the county like ants.
Which is how they got the name used by Cornish natives of 'emmets' - derived from a word for ants in old English, but kept by the Cornish as slang to refer to tourists and non-natives. Generally red in colour and moving in swarms, the Cornish language has a different word for actual ants - moryonen.
Tourism is a double-edged sword of course.Â
- Good thing - their money. Cornwall has little else in the way of an economy, so the hordes are to be fleeced as much as possible while they're here during the warmer months, in order for natives to have enough to pay the rent, heat, and eat, for the rest of the dark, cold, wet and windy months.Â
- Bad thing - there are so bloody many of them they severely strain the limited, paper-thin background infrastructure that makes it 'such a lovely place' to be. Also some of them treat the whole county like it's a theme park, with the locals being only its low-paid staff, here to serve their needs and be quietly subservient and thankful. That sort can fuck off.
But it is definitely 'wits about you and stay alert' time around the local, single-track lanes. In times past, the vast network of quiet lanes through the many hamlets were a safe and quiet way for locals to get about, avoiding the main holiday traffic-choked routes by nipping around these 'back ways'. The A-road following crowds just see the signposts for mysterious places with funny names starting with 'Tre' off to the left and right, as they are sitting watching their temperature gauges rising in another stationary queue on the clogged main road.
But now there is sat-nav.
Sat-nav gives the emmet hordes the confidence to turn off the main route now, and to drive their family-sized, one-and-a-half ton plus SUV vehicles (some families obviously number about twenty members judging by the size of a modern 'family-sized' vehicle) around tiny lanes, which were designed for people herding a flock of sheep from one field to another on, while good old sat-nav will ensure that they reach their destination. But the sat-nav doesn't know what the small and narrower lines on the map data are really like.
Summer is the time when the lanes are apparently at their narrowest as the grass, bracken, foxgloves, red campion and rosebay willowherb, grow luxuriously long and tall, making the deep hedgerow-lined lanes seem like narrower corridors than they are. Emmet vehicles - often distinguished from a locals car by being a/. relatively new and clean, b/. having something on the roof - either a roof box or some surfboards, and possibly a bike rack with at least four adult bikes properly mounted and then three tiny child's bikes bungee corded on to them at the back, and c/. enormous - are driven down the centre of the road, the driver trying their very best not to scratch their precious on the vegetation, and leaving, if they can, about a metre and a half gap to the hedges on either side.
Sat-nav is guiding them, but if you are following one you must take care and travel a safe distance behind as, at any moment, the huge thing will perform an emergency stop in front of you, from 40 mph to 0 mph in ten metres, a cloud of road dust and gravel kicked up by skidding tyres, brake lights glowing through the haze, then an indicator will blink once momentarily and the emmet car will disappear. Possibly right into someone's driveway.
The sat-nav has said "Make a left turn", the driver has said "What?
Here?", and the sat-nav has replied. "YES! HERE! RIGHT NOW!"
Staying alert when you recognise the vehicle type in front of you is wise, but you are advised to be equally alert when you can't see them. Because, as you drive around lanes familiar to yourself, knowing where pinch points and passing places are, and treating tight corners you can't see around very respectfully just in case there's a couple of people riding horses up the lane just around it, the emmet won't be. They will be driving from the other way around the corner towards you treating it like a road in a one way system - which it probably would be in a city centre.
They appear suddenly, surfboards pointing at you from their roof,
threatening to shoot off, fly through your windscreen and decapitate you
as the emergency stop manoeuvre (seemingly the only braking manoeuvre a
city driver knows) is performed again, a pair of horrified faces, frozen
in total surprised shock that there's a car coming in the opposite
direction on a lane this size behind their sunglasses, and screaming
obscenities through the windscreen.
Assuming no actual
impacts, then comes the passing each other negotiation. Even in the
widest single track lane, where two vehicles going in opposite
directions can pass each other - with care and a gentle squeeze into the
hedgerow - the emmet car driver will not think that it can be possible.
You will already have retracted your wing mirrors and driven deeply into
the hedge. Your passenger if you have one will be wincing from the sound
of bracken and brambles scratching up the side of the car (again). If
you don't have a passenger, the sounds are quieter because they're not
accompanied by someone screaming "NO! DON'T GET ANY CLOSER!"
Meanwhile the emmet driver will be looking blankly at you, not moving forwards to pass at all. You mouth 'Plenty of room' and wave them onwards. They don't move. You can see that they still have a clear metre and a half on the hedge side of their car. Mustn't scratch the paintwork. Mustn't even be within a metre of scratching the paintwork.
You sigh.
You are aware that they are only twenty metres away from a wider passing place, and that it would be easy to for them to reverse to it. You try to signal that to them with an impressive array of hand signals, avoiding the rude ones, and mouthed words to accompany them. Impassive faces stare back. Emmets rarely reverse. Reverse is a gear that they only use to get the car out their own driveway, after that city progress is all forwards at 20mph if they're lucky, interrupted by the occasional emergency stop. Never reverse, that's weakness, and the other drivers would spot it and would gather around to attack and feast on your expensive chassis.
You sigh.
To get this over with, you select reverse and go back to your last wider bit, probably two hundred metres. You probably do it at quite high speed, just to show off to them how competent you are at a skill they have no knowledge of. As a local, you can go backwards in a lane all day if you wanted to. Some days it feels like you did. Reversing is so natural when meeting tankers, tractors, supermarket delivery vans, school buses etc., etc. It's actually a lot less bother than trying to get an emmet to go backwards. On the rare occasions one does, you often fear for safety of the young incumbent family as you watch the vehicle making slow zig-zag backwards progress over the course of ten or fifteen minutes per hundred metres.
And then, when you get out of all that, you might meet a someone towing a caravan next. Or even a twenty metre long motorhome. They're not lost. Just following the sat-nav's instructions. And there is nowhere remote enough you can go to avoid them now.
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