Halfway into our coast-to-coast drive across France, our camper van’s deranged satnav, whom we had nicknamed George, came up with a new crackling statement. “GPS signal lost!” he (it) was announcing triumphantly every five minutes. It was a significant addition to his usual mantra, “You are over the speed limit!”, which he particularly enjoyed repeating when we were stuck in a long motorway queue.

I first introduced George – or the SatNag, as we had monikered him – to E&T readers in 2021. We inherited him as part of an outdated sound system, firmly embedded into the dashboard of our Toyota Alphard campervan, aka Alphie. George was irritating, but also irrepressible: three years on, despite using a Google Maps satnav from my wife’s smartphone, we were still unable to silence our ‘SatNag’!

Luckily, not much navigation was needed on the superbly engineered French autoroutes, with no shortage of well-​designed road signs, including the always relevant...