I've been there too

When I saw this it brought back some none too pleasant memories:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-19058256

It was three years ago. 

Daughter (aged just 16) and younger son (aged 11) were going to go on a mountain bike trail.  Daughter was just getting into biking and had printed out a little bit of an OS map from Mountain Biker magazine for a trail they could follow.

So I dropped them off at the car park at the bottom of the hill and arranged to meet them at the car park at the top.  It should take them about an hour to do the trail.  I last saw them at about 3.30pm.

I sat in the car park at the top sewing name tags into younger son's new school uniform (it's the kind of thing that mums do).

An hour went and past.  And another.

I was sat in a car park at a place called Dead Woman's Ditch.  It's in the middle of the Quantocks and there's precious little mobile phone signal anywhere there.

Even at the best of times it's difficult to get teenagers to actually answer their phones, but every time all I got was "Welcome to O***** answerphone..."

So what do you do?

I was reluctant to drive off anywhere to look for them because a) it was woodland between where I'd left them and where they were supposed to go to  and b) if they turned up and I wasn't there then where would they go then?

Two chaps on mountain bikes in their 40s turned up so I approached them.  Oh yes, they knew that trail, they'd go and have a look for them.  Only bit of good news is that daughter was wearing a bright pink helmet so they'd be easily recognisable and also noticeable at a distance.  Half an hour later they came back and said, no they'd been down that trail to the bottom and come up a different way and there was no sign of them.

By now it was about 6pm and although it was nowhere near dusk yet (being August) I was very aware that the clock was ticking.

I'm sorry, I have to go and do other things now.  To be continued (that is, if you're interested).