What's wrong with this picture?

I've just got back from an extremely fun weekend of being ridiculed by my Greenbelt support steward friends. I'm quite tired, due to staying up too late and drinking a lot (but not falling over or being sick this time).

I drove down. It's the first time I've driven such a long way - we were near Chepstow, on South Wales.

Let's look at the stats:

Distance home: 168 miles.
Time taken to get home: about 4 hours
Incidents of swearing at drivers: twice, in my head.

Distance there: 180 miles
Time taken to get there: nearly 5.5 hours
Incidents of swearing at drivers: numerous, at high volume

Let's see if there's any reason for this discrepancy:

On the way down, I gave a friend a lift. Let's call him... Handbag... to protect his identity. So we set off. I have excellent directions provided by the friend we're staying with. I give the directions to Handbag. We're driving down the M6 and it's reasonably busy. Handbag suggests the M6 Toll road to avoid congestions. I ask if we can still get on our route. Handbag assures me that we can. We drive down the M6 Toll and look for signs onto the M5, our next road. Turns out this is via the M42. I think this is a bit odd. Oh well.

Handbag rings the friend we're staying with to tell her where we're up to. She expresses some surprise that we're on the M42. She then rings Guilty* who is also driving up. He's some way along the M5, which is jam-packed, and knows the M42, which is also jam-packed. He wets himself laughing.

If you look at the larger map andcan see our journey, you might see where we went wrong...


View Larger Map

Obviously, I blame Handbag.

Not that the journey back was over an hour qicker, despite everything above Cheltenham being wreathed in fog (I learnt where my fog lights are). Moral of the story? Don't believe people when they tell you they can map-read.

*Yes, all my friends really do have weird names.