Navigating New (or not so new) Areas with Little To No Vision

I don't want to turn this into a blindness blog, because there are enough of those already. Saying that though, some people have said I should perhaps do something about navigating, so thought I might as well write something to that since it's at least somewhat specific and related to travelling. In terms of walking around new areas, I like to explore my surroundings and see what I can of the trees and any buildings etc that might be around. I can't distinguish color or read print though, so rely on hearing or smell or touch. I normally just grab my cane and go, so if I want to go somewhere specific I tend to ask for directions. I'm not the most confident when it comes to crossing busy roads, so typically get someone to guide me across them. The most annoying thing I find when walking in big towns and cities is the a-boards businesses tend to have outside, especially the larger ones because I have to go round them to avoid my cane getting stuck underneath them. There are a lot of people in some places who find it necessary to grab hold me when "trying to help". Apart from being pretty scary since you never know what people's intentions are, I find it can hurt like hell. Another thing that I've never understood is why people have this assumption that someone with a vision impairment must automatically have a problem with stairs. I went for a job interview last November and despite my having already gone up a set of stairs to get into the building, as soon as the main person doing the interview even saw me, they decided that it would be too dificult for me to get up to the normal interview room because it was up the stairs and through the warehouse. I told them I was fine with stairs, but that wasn't good enough either because they already decided they were going to move my interview. Even if I had got the job, I doubt I would have taken it because of their attitude. Last week I was in a shop and asked a member of staff how to get to the stairs to go down to the ground-floor. Immediately she wanted to take me to the lift until I told her I was fine with the stairs, but still "do you not want to go to the lift?". No! It's only my eyes that don't work properly not my lefs! As far as buses go ... well that's a whole other story. I find accessibility in the UK very hit-and-miss. I could use some kind of GPS app on the stupidphone I mean smartphone, but although they have worked on the odd occasion, I find they don't really work for me because I either get off too early or too late. Some buses have spoken announcements to tell everyone what the next stop is, but most don't. I'm not including London in this because it's London and the exception to the rule, plus I don't go there unless I have a reason to be there. Having said that though, the London buses and most of the tubes do seem to all talk, although I am told the announcements can still be turned off if the driver wants to do that. I can only write about areas that I've lived or stayed in, but this is going to be a long one. In Newcastle, the 45, 46 and 47 buses from what I remember all have spoken announcements, but sometimes they don't work too well. The q1 and q2 buses that go around Gateshead and a bit of Newcastle are supposed to talk, but either they didn't work when I used them or they just weren't turned on. I spoke to a driver about it because I was getting fed up of having to ask them just in case the thing didn't talk. The only meaningful response I got from the driver was that they can get annoying. I totally see where he's coming from in that the spoken announcements every few minutes can drive you up the wall if you're driving the same route all day or listening to the same thing all day, but at the same time I think that either they have to stay on so people can make a decision as to whether to stay on the bus or to jump off at a different stop. If I change my mind I would like to do so without having to tell the whole bus about it. So please drivers either leave the announcements on or get a microphone and announcements yourself. I can't remember about the other buses in the northeast, because I haven't been on them for ages. The little metro trains also normally have spoken announcements, but at times they don't talk for some reason. I don't recall the buses talking at all in the area of Lincolnshire and Norfolk between Kings Lynn and Spalding. Then again I don't very often take them because Nan and Grandad drive, so they typically take me to places anyway. The buses and the little train don't talk on the Isle Of Whyte either. In Bristol and Somerset, the T2 is supposed to have spoken announcements but most of the time they don't work. I don't understand why. None of the other buses talk around here, but they need to because the biggest problem is drivers not knowing the area! So many times the drivers don't even know the names of the stops on the routes they're paid to drive, but I thought that would be a requirement even if you don't know what's around. I specifically give a name of a stop that I know is on the route, so I expect to be able to get there. I do sometimes tell them what the bus stop is near, but only if it's in an area I already know or have spent some time in. So everyone don't bother asking the drivers of the x6 or x6 from Bristol to Clevedon for insert stop here, even if there is a sign on the actual bus stop that says its name. From the little bus travel I've done in Finland, the drivers have been really helpful in telling me the stop, even if they don't have spoken announcements. The drivers on Flixbus and National Express coaches are normally good about announcing the stops, but again some don't bother, which is quially annoying. Another thing about crossing roads in the UK is that most of the controlled road-crossings no longer have sound. They're supposed to beep to tell when the lights change and pedestrians can walk, but most don't. The argument of most councils is that if there is more than 1 in a certain area they won't make them have sound because it "could get confusing". The UK ones also have a rotating cone on the box just below the button, but that's only useful if a bunch of conditions are true - like assuming first that some idiot hasn't come along and snapped it off, also assuming it hasn't frozen if the temperature has been cold and also if you're the one standing right next to the box in order to reach it. The Isle Of Whyte I find horrible to walk around for the reason that the curbs aren't even consistent. For example there might be a curb on one side of a road but not on the other. There's a crossing in Sandown last time I was there a couple of years ago, and there was nothing in the middle of the road to show that people were meant to stop (no tactile pavement or raised concrete or anything), but apparently only a "keep left" sign. In Hereford none of the buses talk, but the drivers tend to be helpful in telling me when my stop is if I ask them. Also it's not exactly flat there, so I can pretty easily tell where the bus is by the turns it takes and hills and things. In Finland they normally have a ticking sound on the controlled road-crossings. In the part of Helsinki I stayed in March though, they don't seem to have a sound in those ones or any kind of tactile feedback, so had to get someone to guide me as it was a road with multiple sections kind of like a star so I'm told. Apparently parents put in complaints though, because they can't watch their children and watch the lights at the same time, o hopefully that will change soon if it hasn't already. A little word about trains and ferries and things - I used to go on the Sea France ferries to France for the day with Nan and Grandad when I was between 14 and 16 and went once when I was 13 with my school. I noticed then that the signs were in braille in French and English, so was really surprised to see that there are absolutely no braille signs on the boats from North Shields to just outside Amsterdam or on the ferry from Helsinki to Mariham to Stockholm. I've always much preferred the trains in Finland to those in the UK. At least you actually get a seat on the ones in Finland, as you reserve one when you book your ticket. The spoken announcements on the trains in Finland are not only in Finnish, but also normally in Swedish and sometimes Russian and for some reason in English. I don't know if any of the trains in Wales have announcements in Welsh for the stops, but they have Welsh and English announcements at the train stations. They have announcements at train stations in England as to which train is at the platform or next as well, but again on the trains the announcements might not even happen. I got so tired of not knowing where we were pasing through in Wales once that I asked a conductor why he wasn't announcing the stops, only to be told that in their training to be conductors they're specifically told to only announce the principal stations, so of course the little unmanned ones got sadly missed out. The trains in the UK are all owned by different companies, os it's hard to categorize them. Some have automated announcements which announce the stops fine, but some don't have any. On other trains though, the conductor has a microphone and announces the stops that are coming up. Although I'm no fan of crossing busy roads, I much prefer to walk to places if I can. Some places are harder to do that in than others because at times it's hard to distinguish what's the end of a street and what's a curve in the road just for the sake of being a curve. Also in the town of South Shields in the northeast of England, the streets at times run into each other. I'm thinking particularly of Ocean Road, King Street and the street that goes to the market place. Well that's enough of my blind navigation ramble.