Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Satnav error leaves shoppers in wrong country

A Christmas shopping trip to Lille in France ended up 100 miles away in a Belgian village with the same name after their coach driver made a satnav blunder.

By the time the coach party from from the Cheltenham and Gloucester Sports and Social Club in Gloucestershire arrived at the French town they only had two hours to spend in the shops before they closed for the night.

"It was ridiculous," said one passenger. "The coach driver obviously had two Lilles to choose from on his satnav and he picked the wrong one."

"A few of us started to wonder what was going on when we saw signs for Eindhoven, which clearly isn’t in France. But the driver wouldn’t be told - he insisted he knew what he was doing."

"The whole trip was blighted really because on the trip back to Ostend the next morning, following our night in a hotel, the driver switched off his satnav - but ended up on a road with a low bridge that he couldn’t get under.

"He had to retrace his steps and find another road - which added another hour to the time we spent on the bus."

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