Sometimes the journey isn’t as important as the destination

Trudy Tyler went away for the Bank Holiday weekend. But stuck in traffic on her way back she wondered if three days in the countryside were really worth it. By Christine Manby

(Tom Ford)

I got back to London after spending the Bank Holiday in the country feeling less than rested. Whoever said that “the journey is more important than the destination” never tried to drive anywhere in the United Kingdom on a long weekend when everyone who would normally have taken a bucket flight to an all-inclusive hotel on the continent is having to make do with a static van next to a British pig farm. The horrendous traffic I met on the way back to the capital quickly undid the benefits of three nights in the fresh air.

As we sat in a tailback that the local radio traffic news suggested was five miles long, Minky the hamster, who had accompanied me to Herefordshire in her cage, squeaked in indignation.

“Yes,” I agreed with her. “Some of the things human beings do for fun really are almost as ridiculous as endlessly jogging round a wheel.”

Another squeak.

“I know,” I interpreted. “As a hamster being kept as a pet, you don’t have much choice when it comes to how you spend your spare time. I’ll order you a slide or something when we get back home. Someone must make hamster slides. If they don’t…” I spent a moment mulling over the idea as a possible business start-up.

Over the weekend, my friend Liz had asked why I didn’t get a dog. I love dogs, it’s true, but I’d come to the conclusion over lockdown that I couldn’t give a dog the life it deserved. Was I short-changing Minky too? Having reach a top speed of five miles an hour for about fifteen minutes, the traffic was at an absolute standstill again. After a couple of minutes more, the people two cars ahead got out to stretch their legs. It wasn’t long before other traffic-bound travellers followed suit.

I glanced at the grassy bank that flanked the motorway. Should I just let Minky out here, on the embankment of the M4, right now?  Would that be kind or cruel? She’d never known anything but life in a human household. Could she learn how to forage in the great outdoors?

If hamsters were scavengers, like foxes or pigeons, she would have been fine. Now that we weren’t moving, I could see that the long grass was covered in fast food wrappers and coffee cups. Is there anything more emblematic of humanity than the detritus we leave on the road?

I watched as the driver of a Porsche 4 by 4 hybrid in front of my car wound down his window and added another burger box to the collection. Moments later, one of the back windows was wound down and a child did the same. I imagined the dad was very pleased with the pristine interior of his vehicle and liked to brag about its eco-friendly engine when one of the neighbours stopped to chat while he was out the front cleaning it with his Karcher.

I mouthed something unkind at the Porsche driver’s numberplate, which coincidentally contained almost all the letters required to make the word “wanker”.

Ugh. There were more people stretching their legs on the hard shoulder now. It seemed we weren’t going anywhere soon. I turned off my engine. No point wasting petrol. The dial said the tank was still half full, but running out of petrol on the motorway has always been one of my biggest fears. As the Porsche driver climbed from his seat to do some bends and stretches that threatened to split his shorts, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in the hope of regaining my equilibrium.

My equilibrium was far from regained when I became aware that the driver of the car behind me – an Audi 4 by 4 – was leaning on his horn. While I’d been attempting my mini-meditation, everyone had got back into their cars and the traffic had moved forward approximately half a metre. Mr Audi did not want to lose a millisecond. I restarted my engine and promptly stalled it, sending Mr Audi into a fit of honking rage. Time seemed to go into slow motion as I bunny-hopped my car up to the bumper of the Porsche. Then of course the traffic stopped dead again. I was four hours into what should have been a three and a half hour journey and still hadn’t even made it as far as Newbury.

At last, I saw a sign for Chieveley Services and made the decision, along with everyone else, their gran and their dog, to turn in for a pre-emptive widdle. Who knew how much longer I would have to be in the car before I got home?  The sun beat down on the car park as we baked in unseasonal heat (question: is the weather in the UK ever not “unseasonal”?).

The people in the car parked up next to mine left their windows half wound down so that their dog could get some air. I did the same for Minky. The last thing I wanted was to return to my car to find that she had expired or, worse, that someone had smashed the windows to rescue my grumpy rodent friend.

The queue for the ladies’ was roughly as long as the motorway tailback and seemed to be making people equally prone to bursts of anger. Two mothers squared up to each other over an accusation of queue-jumping.

“She was holding my place.”

“You can’t have one person hold a place for a whole family. There’s seven of you.”

“The kids can’t go on their own, can they?” said the queue jumper.

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To me, the kids all looked old enough to buy booze but I kept my eyes down, like a meerkat accidentally trapped between two elephant matriarchs.

When I got back to the car, I found that someone had put their arm through the gap in the window I’d made for Minky’s safety and pinched my phone, which I’d left behind because it hadn’t worked since I dropped it in the cow-pat. Good luck to them, I thought. They left behind my CD collection.