Google Maps takes the scenic route to Donegal

NET RESULTS:Internet-based map services can be useful – as long as you know where you are going, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

IT’S ALL very well to say that if you are trying to get to there, you wouldn’t start from here, but when you are asking the internet for directions, you expect to be cut some slack.

After all, you’d think the point of internet-based map services is to help a doofus like me, someone who, even after a couple of decades living in Ireland, still cannot find their way around the State (much less the city of Dublin) unless I have been there at least once on a bicycle.

My main excuse is that I only got my own car three years ago, hence travel had meant the bike, examining a train or bus schedule or hailing a taxi. Now, it involves maps and asking Google, MapQuest, Yahoo or similar to tell me how to find my destination.

But a recent car trip to Donegal using Google Maps, and a whip round to check choices from other map services, left me feeling like I’d stopped and asked directions from that apocryphal yokel who would have chosen a better departure point than here.

Of six map options queried for directions on how to get from Dublin to Killybegs, the one I unquestioningly chose to use – Google Maps – turned out to be the most bizarre. Unfortunately, I only realised this once I was on a back road heading toward Clooneen.

Towards where, you ask? Why, surely you know Clooneen? It is the only Irish town on the entire Google route that is actually named in directions. All the rest are terrifyingly vague: “Turn left at Main St/R280”; “Turn right at Main St/N4” – with no indication whatsoever of what town’s main street you are on, in either case. Google assumes you have kept an eye on the car’s meter to know that previously, you will have travelled 14.9km or 53.4km respectively before you reached those mystery main streets.

I missed a significant right turn first on to the R299, which apparently was somewhere just before you enter Carrick-on-Shannon (not that you were given a town name). I managed to grope my way though on to the R280 an alternative way, at which point I started to question why the heck Google gives this route as its first choice.

No disrespect to the R280 and surrounding lovely countryside, but this is in no way a direct or a typical route to get from Dublin to Donegal. While everyone else heading to Donegal was comfortably taking the more obvious N3 or N2 routes, either via Sligo or up around Enniskillen, I alone seem to have been sent on this weird cross-country chase.

Several times I had to pull over and compare my Google directions with my paper maps. That’s how I realised I’d missed one turn (although honestly, it would have made more sense to cling to that “mistake” and go to Sligo).

The most surreal moment however was trying to figure out where the heck some town called Clooneen was. It wasn’t on my Google map printout, it wasn’t on my half-inch ordinance survey map nor was such a town listed on my car map book. But there on my Google directions it clearly stated: “Turn left at Clooneen/R280”.

It had to be a significant place, being the only town actually named in the 24 individual steps that made up my Dublin to Killeybegs directions.

Only as I drove along Lough Allen did it suddenly become clear, as I passed a direction sign – this was the Irish name for Manorhamilton. Not spelled Clooneen at all, but listed jointly in Irish, Cluainín. Please. Not a single map lists Manorhamilton as Clooneen. I’d guess most Irish people would not be aware that Manorhamilton is Cluainín, much less Clooneen. Foreigners are going to be totally banjaxed. Having Google tell people like me to turn left at Clooneen is as useless a direction as being told I shouldn’t have started from Dublin to get to Donegal.

Having finally reached Killybegs by this curious route, which Google listed as the shortest using main or toll roads (279km and three hours 57 minutes estimated drive time), I wanted to see where other map services would have sent me.

Five others said they sure wouldn’t have sent me left at Clooneen. Yahoo Maps and Bing would have dispatched me via the N2, then split on different routes through the North before coming into Donegal. The distances were similar to Google (275 and 270km) but estimated drive times were shorter, at about 3½ hours.

MapQuest and Expedia opted to stay within the Republic, travelling via Sligo and the N3. Again, distance was similar to the Google option, but drive time was shorter with MapQuest – 3½ hours.

My favourite though was the uber-geek option: search site Wolfram Alpha. It showed the “drive” as a ruler-straight line, as the crow flies. Distance, just 206km, and travel time? Well, you get several options. By aircraft, 14 minutes; at the speed of sound, 10 minutes; for light moving through a fibreoptic cable, 0.965 milliseconds; and light travelling in a vacuum, 685 microseconds.

Next time, I’m definitely opting for the “light in a vacuum” option. That way, you don’t have to turn left at Clooneen.

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