I KNEW it was going to be a challenging journey when I agreed to chauffeur myself and three other pensioners on a five-day jaunt to Northern Ireland for a wedding.

The fact that the four travellers, with a combined age approaching 275, were joined by a cantankerous younger woman for much of the way made it more testing still.

I had been to the province once before, on a trip with that much- missed airline Gill Air, whose fleet of quaint aircraft looked like Tyne Valley buses with wings, so much so that you could open the sliding windows while airborne.

However, my fellow travellers had not, and there was much debate as to whether we should fly from Newcastle, and hire a car at the other end, or sample the delights of Dumfries and Galloway en route to a ferry crossing from south west Scotland.

In the end, the ferry won, because it was deemed easier to transport the frills and fol de rols of wedding regalia in one car rather than risking the overhead compartments of a no frills airline.

To my amazement, the nuptial requirements of all four of us fitted rather neatly into the boot of my hatchback, and I could even see out of the back window without fear of obstruction by a feathered fascinator or 16 extra pairs of tights.

Everything went rather smoothly until we approached the outskirts of Carlisle, where the spectre at the feast, Sat Nav Lady, told me to turn left, when Mrs Hextol insisted we should carry straight on at a roundabout.

Taking my life in my hands, I turned left, suffering the wrath of Mrs Hextol, who said it would have saved at least 10 minutes if we had gone straight on.

Sat Nav Lady did sound rather smug as we continued our journey, and indeed, Mrs Hextol was quite right, for we would have hit the M6 a lot earlier if we had listened to her.

But as we sailed round the M6 roundabout, a plaintive voice from the back seat said somewhat querulously: “Are we not stopping at Tesco? We always stop at Tesco because I need the toilet and the Tesco toilets are always clean.”

We were not even an hour into the journey, which I deemed a little early for toilet breaks, and we were already committed to taking the M6 slip road heading north, so I said we would stop at the first available rest room facilities.

Mrs Hextol was still giving a running commentary on my foolishness in taking Sat Nav Lady’s instruction rather than hers, noting: “See, we would have come on the M6 here, not right back there – and there’s a an Asda, so we needn’t have gone to Tesco anyway.”

We had hit Annan before the squeaks from the rear indicated I really should find somewhere if I did not want a damp back seat.

I spotted a sign which seemed to indicate a museum dedicated to the Scottish national dish of porridge, a notion so bizarre I turned off and followed the brown signs towards this intriguing institution – only to be stopped in my tracks by stereo squeals of “there’s a Tesco!”– and I turned into the capacious car park of the consumer palace.

The two ladies trooped off together as we men sat silently shaking our heads, forever denied the promised insights into oaten breakfast comestibles.

We reached the ferry terminal ahead of time, despite protests from Sat Nav Lady, who was bamboozled by roundabouts introduced after she was programmed, causing her to order U-turns in the middle of a dual carriageway.

The crossing to Larne was smooth, the wedding wonderful and the tourist delights of County Antrim – particularly the Giant’s Causeway and the terrifying Carrick a Rede rope bridge – memorable.

I drank more Guinness over five days than I had in the previous 40 years, without a trace of a hangover, and was enormously impressed by the warmth and friendliness of the locals.

The ferry crossing home was even smoother than the outward journey, and I breathed a sigh of relief at the decision to go by boat, after hearing that the Sunday afternoon flight bringing several other guests home had been cancelled, and they were being flown to Birmingham on Monday morning, prior to a trip back to Newcastle by taxi!