I asked my lovely astrologer, as we neared our home after a rather unexpectedly long walk, what he thought astrologically was the significator of a sense of direction. It wasn’t a pointed question. I was merely interested. I have always been rather proud of my sense of direction; I seldom get lost and usually need to travel somewhere just once in order to be able to repeat the journey without a hiccup.

He replied that he thought Mercury – ruler of roads and short journeys – was probably the answer. Well now, that would make sense to me. I have Mercury in Leo. See? Proud of my sense of direction.

My astrologer himself has Neptune in the 3rd. Not a hope of his finding his way out of a room with one door, you might say. Nonetheless, I find myself humouring him on a regular basis when he proffers his opinions about the route we should take. I don’t believe in ritual humiliation.

So yesterday, living as we do in a bit of a rural idyll, surrounded by kingfishers, badgers and more tiny birds than you can possibly imagine, we set off for a stroll in the weakening evening sun. After two months in our current home, we finally bought a map of the local footpaths that cut their swathes through our countryside. We didn’t, however, feel it necessary to bring it with us. My astrologer was feeling a little peaky, the tagine for our supper was in the oven, bread in the machine due to finishing its cycle within the hour – it was just going to be an easy stroll.

We headed down a well-marked track and congratulated ourselves on our decision. It was a beautiful evening, the fresh air was making my astrologer feel markedly better and the views were beautiful. At a bridge, we paused and pondered the best route to take, when a gentleman walking his dogs informed us of the way. It brought us out, past lots of gambolling lambs, by the church in our village. This little walk had taken all of fifteen minutes. We stopped on a bench for a breather, spotted a signpost pointing straight ahead in the general direction of home, and decided to follow it. My beloved astrologer, humble in the acknowledgement of his 3rd House Neptune, handed over navigational duties to me. This, dear reader, was our error. We should simply have spun on our heels and taken the known and trodden path back to safety.

Our half-hour stroll took us on a circuitous and entirely erroneous adventure through a never-ending patchwork quilt of adjoining (albeit stunningly beautiful) fields and down dales that washed us back up on our front step, exhausted and beaten, some two and a half hours later. It was, in fact, only the haphazard bumping into a small group of rather amusingly power-walking ladies in high-visibility jackets that stopped us going even further off the beaten track.

Today we are resting up.

Mercury is retrograde. Please don’t forget to take your map.