discover pluntrain dale lane

hey there

it is not uncommon, look you see, for people to ask me (as in, pose) a question which they feel that no one else can answer, or otherwise dare not speak of to anyone else. this is rather flattering, of course, and as flattery will get you everywhere i am always happy to oblige with an answer. or, at the least, provide what information i can. 

let us assume that this is what happened in respect of this post. yes, it would be more polite and civil to merrily go along with the idea that someone asked me to establish which is the best, most picturesque and predominantly rural road to get hopelessly and woefully stuck on in North Yorkshire. this sounds considerably better than any such reality in which i decided to allow blind devotion to a previously treacherous sat nav outweigh ideals of common sense.

this would be an unusual question to be posed to me (anonymously, of course), but posed it was, kind of. i set off to find an answer, and it very much is the case that the answer is the imaginatively named Pluntrain Dale Lane, located on or in the hotly contested area on the outskirts of Pickering. 

thank you google

exactly how i came to stumble on this hidden gem (and subsequently be stuck there for a while) is a little bit of a curious mystery. in respect of where i was going, the A to B of it, i was unable to determine any rational reason why my sat nav sent me the way it did. but, it did, and i followed it. when it instructed me to turn right and then then immediately left onto Pluntrain Dale Lane, i thought wow, that is an unusual street name. quite soon after that, on seeing it, i thought wow, this does not really look like a conventional road. 

but still i turned down it. many a quaint and non-traditional "road" i have travelled in my time, for verk, and this did not look so different. for a start, there were no sheep or similar livestock, it was not on a tank testing range, and there was no sign of the RAF. so, i drove down this road, or if you like lane. 

mostly, i would say, this all went rather well. perhaps not "well" as such, but fine. if, that is, fine is closer to "maybe not so good" than well is as a description of it all. we, which is to say my vehicle and i, got roughly (in retrospect) half way down Pluntrain Dale Lane (that sort of "corner dent" in the middle on the map above) when half of we, which would be the van, more or less (ipso facto) said something along the lines of "f*** this" (in vehicle stuck speak) and would move no more. no, not one of my (in)famous breakdowns, but rather "we" had dropped into a significant muddy water sticky area that made traction (if that means movement) not at all possible. oh, bother. 

words such as "bother", "gosh" and indeed "flip" were used as i surveyed my plight. the plight of my vehicle, i suppose, since it was the one mostly in distress. as my instinctive sense of survival taught me to do, i of course immediately set about taking some selfies, then had a cigarette or two (sorry), and then made a call or two so as to alert people to my distress, on the off chance that someone may believe it would be worth the effort to rescue me. 

yes, i felt incredibly stupid and was quite cross with myself. oh how easy it is to say "i should have known better" in retrospect. no, the road did not look conventional, but it also did not look impenetrable or impossible to pass. and yet here i was, another chapter in the never ending book of accounts of motorists who took remarkably stupid turns on roads and said of doing so "well the sat nav said to do it". we, as people, really are all too often the masters of our downfall. 

no, let us not turn this into a crusade against technology, for it was equipment similar to a sat nav which placed me in distress that equally allowed my ultimate (eventual) rescue. i did my best to explain to the nice chap on the phone where i was. to this, he sent me a text message and requested that i "click" (or rather tap) on the "link" in it. after doing so, he was able to use some sort of "gps" thing to pinpoint precisely where i was, and summoned help to fetch me, or rescue me. 

i passed the time in the same way virtually anyone would on a cold, wet, rainy morning. yes, i kept mostly outside of the vehicle, taking many selfies and appreciating the focus what cigarettes gave at such a time. with respect to one aspect of that, quite by chance, then, i captured an image of the first rescuer (and first is a key word here) walking towards me, which you can see above. 

knowing that i got stuck, and probably via assessing the road a good deal more better than i did before turning down it, this initial rescue chap decided to park on more reasonable, conventional road and take a walk down to see what "the score" (as such) was. as it happened, the "score", or situation, was that he could do absolutely nothing to assist my plight, and suggested that i "sit tight" whilst he called someone to come and do what he termed as being a "special rescue". 

some time passed, then. one of the best things one can do when stuck, somewhat trapped, in a remote rural area with scant resources is, of course, drain the battery on your mobile phone as quickly as possible. this i set about doing. i exchanged some emails with the child of the condiment phoenix, based on the continent. she expressed some concern for my predicament. another exceptionally dear friend, also on the continent (yes, you, Faye) took the time to call me. further, i alerted Codename : Magic and Spiros to my plight, and they thought it was most amusing. i expressed my natural concerns, them being that i might get knacked off of a werewolf like in that documentary, or even shotgunned by an angry farmer for blocking his path. to the latter Spiros said that it was more probable that i would get bummed, whatever that means. it does not sound good. 

just as i was beginning to suspect that i had taken a sufficient number of selfies, and was wondering if i would be called upon to drink my own urine to survive, the second rescuer arrived, in one of them most splendid land rover things. yes, the ones that are meant for conditions such as i was in, but generally get used in more metropolitan areas, inexplicably so.

he (anonymous for security) was also a bit baffled, at first, as to how to get me (or rather the vehicle) out of where it was. further he was also, at first, most reluctant to refer to me as a complete bellend for getting stuck where and how i did, but i insisted and eventually he agreed. i asked if it was common for people to end up stuck here on Pluntrain Dale Lane and he said no, so far as he was aware over the last several years no one had ever attempted to drive down it. once again i asked the same question, and suggested that he may wish to lie or make something up to make me feel better. his second response was that up to five or six people a day get stuck where i was, so i should not feel bad. this made me feel better. after that he noted the pile of spent cigarettes and was concerned that i must have been stuck for several hours to have smoked so much. oh. 

quite a daring, brave rescue in the end, then. the only way to do it, it was determined, was to do a "reverse" tow, as in he pulled up behind me (yet faced forward), hooked me up, he reversed and i had my vehicle in reverse to. of the dangers with this reverse driving, my vehicle ripping the chassis off of his and a bad turn or excess pull free seeing me smack right into his smart land rover were at the forefront. the single biggest problem, however, was that as i would be in reverse, the reversing warning sound would echo in my vehicle, and i was not able to hear the stereo properly. 

we did it, then, and after somewhere north or south of three (or so) hours, i was free. and promptly vowed to stick to far more conventional, standard, tarmac and concrete in nature roads. my thanks to those who came to my rescue, my appreciation to those who sent messages of support, concern or amusement through it all. 

anyway, i think that just about covers the major (and secondary) aspects of this adventure. by all means, if you feel so inclined, feel free to seek out Pluntrain Dale Lane and get stuck there too. i would suggest, however, that you rather simply take my word for it and accept that all you really need to know of the place is knowledge contained above.

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!