Re-discovering Dorset..

The driver was benignly confused as the coach pulled out of the High Street. But then none of us was certain what was about to happen over the next two hours, except for Simon our host. "Only two rules" he said, "We must keep to the rules of the road, and not ask the driver to do anything he feels is perilous to the bus - otherwise we decide were we go, and the meaning of everything we see!"

Within moments of leaving the town, we are passing the trees where Andy the Shoemaker (his surname, not his trade) lives. He's a fairy that no one believes in. Nevertheless we learn that he is responsible for the very secret Dorset Space Programme. We see the distant shape of a rocket amongst the trees on a faraway hill.

We take the next right, by a pub called the True Lovers Knot, after two lovers who's hair became so desperately entangled 40 years ago that they were only able to free themselves last year. Next it's a left past a jogger who is running in the Manchester Marathon but looking for a way to get through to Venus (he's one of the few to have heard of the DSP). At the end of a long country road, we take a right. A left and then straight on and by the time we've skirted Blandford we learn the cows in the fields are alien secret agents, intent on world domination from their newly established headquarters at Bovington.

Straight left and then a right and left again as we round the small village, some asks "Who put the Bere in Bere Regis?", to which there is no coherent answer, as we cut another left closer still to our planned destination. After a long straight run, we go right and then left and suddenly, out of nowhere it seems, we sailing silently through the much anticipated Bovington. But no one seems to realise this is it. Some had intended to get off and look for these alien cows in the flesh. But it's as if everyone is in awe of the place. And we sail through (keeping to the speed limit) without stopping.

Then someone realises we have gone through a rainbow curtain and into New Yorkshire, a colony on Venus. We take a right and thena left and we are on another long straight road. On the way to somewhere else. Someone asks for the next left. The driver knows it is 2 and a half miles on. As we come to the turn though, it is obvious that it will take us back to Bovington but no one wants to go back there. So we panic and go straight on instead. After a left and a right we stop by a river to rest.

The driver returns in ten minutes and we board again with only enough time to make it back to Wimborne. We are in his hands from now. We take a left and then a right, passing another rocket of the Dorset Space Programme, again hidden in trees. We know we are at the end of our time on Venus when we pass the World's End pub. We make a right and a final left and we enter Wimborne at just after 12 noon. Everyone is quiet.

"Going through a magic curtain is like being in a dream in which you've done a lot of things. You wake up exhausted!" says one of our fellow travellers. And there is a whole afternoon of theatre to come!