Memory lane

Let me tell you a story about when I lived in London. One day I was going to visit friends who lived a long way off, and whom I'd never visited before. I wrote down the directions for how to get there, and arranged to leave work at lunchtime so that I'd have plenty of time to get there. So far so good.
I got to the station, bought my ticket and boarded the train. It was an express and got there in next to no time. In fact I arrived much too early, so I followed my written instructions so that I would know how to get to my friends. I followed the instructions but was shocked to arrive at the ring road, and not at the little roundabout I had been expecting. I panicked so asked all and sundry how to get to the street I wanted but nobody had heard of it. I returned to the railway station feeling very confused. I asked a taxi driver to help me. He too said that he had never heard of the street and I gave him a telling off. I waited and waited until I eventually heard from my friends. Do you know what happened? I had gone to Basingstoke believing that they lived there. They didn't. They lived in Aldershot. So after another complicated train journey I eventually arrived there late at night. Who else could have done that, I ask myself.