I've been there too (part two)

So there I am, sat in a carpark at the top of a hill, having last seen two of my children over 2 hours ago and absolutely no sign of them now.

A police car, doing his tour of the hillsides looking for trouble, turned up.  Now usually I wouldn't have approached them, but I was beginning to feel like I was in a news story and I didn't like the way it was going.

He was on the radio straightaway.  He said he'd drive further on along the top of the hill, and yes, it was good that my daughter was wearing a bright pink helmet.

So off he went and there I was, alone again, worrying.  Like why I have chosen to sit in a car park at a place called "Dead Woman's Ditch", of all names?

Ten minutes later another police car turned up and I was invited to go and sit in it and give detailed descriptions of my children, what they were wearing (I hadn't particularly noticed!), what kind of bikes they had.  You really don't want to be doing this, I can tell you.

My descriptions were radioed through and we sat there waiting.  And waiting.  And nothing.



They were three hours late by the time that finally news came through that they'd found them, so we all pootled off to the pub car park at the bottom of the hill where I'd initially dropped them off.

Turns out they'd taken a wrong fork at the bottom of the hill  and had set off at about 40º NE on a different path.  And then every time they'd crested a hill and not found the car park daughter had said "oh, it'll be just over that ridge ahead of us" and so they'd got further and further away from where they should have been.  Eventually they'd given up and decided to retrace their steps back to where they started and that's when they were spotted.


The pub car park was full of police cars - must have been a very quiet Saturday afternoon in west Somerset otherwise.  We all set off back towards Bridgwater in convoy.  Even though I have passed my Advanced Driving Test (over 30 years ago) it's still quite nervewracking driving along with police cars both in front and behind you.



Post script:  I'd just like to add that this was not the first time that my daughter had completely disappeared.   But I shall tell you about that another time.