Published: 20th April 2006 | Author: Times Online

THERE is a lucrative new sport in the Wiltshire village of Luckington: fishing stranded motorists out of a ford at £25 a time.

Since a road closure, dozens of drivers have blithely followed directions from their satellite navigation systems, not realising that the recommended route goes through the ford.

Normally the water — the start of the River Avon — is about 2ft deep but it can swiftly double in depth after heavy rain.

Every day since the main B4040 was closed after a wall collapsed on April 8 one or two motorists have been towed out, having either failed to notice or ignored warning signs. Some farmers have been charging £25 to give a tow with tractors.

The ford, known as The Splash, is in Brook End on the edge of Luckington, which is near Malmesbury. Lesley Bennett, 59, a Luckington parish councillor who lives by the ford, said: “When the car conks out the driver looks stunned. When you ask what happened, they say, ‘My sat-nav told me it was this way’.”

Mrs Bennett’s tumble dryer has been working overtime, helping drivers to dry out. She added: “The other day my husband came home and I had to explain why there was a van driver’s trousers in our tumble dryer. He was sitting in his cab, shivering in his boxer shorts.”

Julie Jackson, 45, of Carterton, Oxfordshire, and her mother, Delcie Fielder, 70, had to abandon their Rover 220 in mid-stream after “we heard this gurgling sound and water came right into the car, covering our feet”.

Sat-nav sales have increased five-fold in the past two years, the market research organisation Mintel says, with drivers in Britain spending £305 million on systems last year. But they are not foolproof.