I HAVE always maintained that if Christopher Columbus had taken his wife along on his voyages of discovery, it would have taken him at least a couple of years more to discover the New World.

Simply because women appear to be obsessed with asking complete strangers for directions.

I'm fairly sure that Chris had his problems searching for the Caribbean in 1492, but he surely would have been forced to head back to the nearest land mass every single time he had to look at the map.

Surely I am not alone in being married to someone who does not trust in the slightest her husband's ability to travel from A to B, even when B is a destination in previously uncharted territory.

How many times have we been heading somewhere and strayed off the correct road, only to discover within seconds possibly the most intrinsic difference between our sexes?

"You're on the wrong road. Turn back," I will be told as we blithely cruise down the open road.

"Don't worry, there'll be a sign soon," I will reply, happy to be enjoying both the music on the stereo and the excitement of discovering new places.

Cue a long and heated discussion about the psychology of a man's reluctance to travel somewhere he has already been when new experiences await him on stretches of road which, while new, will surely inevitably lead him to the place he is heading.

Yet this argument - however persuasive when allied to the human spirit's desire for fresh and enriching experiences - seems only to irritate my wife, whose language develops a blueish and maritime tinge.

Is it a woman's fear of the unknown which drives them to such compelling and outrageous behaviour or simply that they are poor navigators and map readers and cannot tell the difference between the B3176 and the A254?

Either way, a reluctance to spend a weekend hunched over or sitting on a padded cushion means that discretion wins out and I pull up alongside the first person we see on the open road.

This is usually someone with a funny moon face standing at the side of the road staring at the ground and counting his feet.

He could tell you the quickest way to get to his planet, but he sure as hell doesn't know how to get back on to the main road.

Or if you're really lucky - and have 140 words per minute shorthand - you will encounter the village boffin who rattles off directions which include the precise road numbers, names, distance, Ordnance Survey co-ordinates and relevant buildings, pubs and lamp-posts.

To be honest, it's far easier just to turn round and retrace your steps, but which one of us likes to see that smug smile on our wife's face?