I COULD have sworn I knew the road to Carnwath. In fact before they invented motorways I could find my way to places like that without difficulty. And if you happened to take a wrong turn, well, no great harm was done. You would soon pick up the route.

Then came the age of speed and sophisticated graphics and along the information highway I'm finding myself in bamboozlement as never before. All right, I may be navigationally challenged (that's modern jargon for an idiot with no sense of direction) but I came off the M8 Motorway at a junction too soon.

Apparently I should have taken the second sign to Newhouse and that, I am told, would have led to Carluke and onward to Carnwath for a journey of no more than 40 minutes from Glasgow. But of course I took the first sign to Newhouse and was lost in a Motherwell maze - following a sign back to Glasgow nearly an hour after I left it!

With the speed of modern traffic you hesitate to stop for guidance. And even when you do, the certainty is you'll be treated to some gobbledygook, with the inevitable ''You can't miss it.''

Well I can; and did. And after wending my way through Wishaw, Carluke, and mistakenly by Lanark, I passed the state hospital at Carstairs and got the first piece of sensible direction. Carnwath was upon me, at least 50 minutes later than intended.

But nothing goes wrong for ever and, in the need for a refreshment, I tumbled upon the ideal little howff which glories in the name of the Wee Bush Inn. It is thatched and welcoming and has been there since 1750. In fact Robert Burns used to drop in on his way from Ayr to Edinburgh, for Carnwath was where he would pick up the old coach road to the capital, known as the Lang Whang.

And as I sat there, engrossed in a bowl of delicious lentil soup and thinking the world wasn't such a bad place after all, I reflected on the fact that Burns would probably have ridden from Ayr to Carnwath in less time than it took me to come from Glasgow in a powerful motor car. Such is progress.

As was his custom, Rabbie is said to have scratched some words on a pane of glass at the Wee Bush Inn, though nobody quite knows what happened to the pane.

Carnwath is long and quaint, with its Market Cross and church dating back to the early fifteenth century. There is a sense of history and belonging - and the local lady sharing my pleasure in the lentil soup was putting me right on a few matters, not least my recent assertion about allowing the Burrell Collection to go on loan abroad.

Isabel McLean didn't agree that the late Dr Tom Honeyman, director of Glasgow Art Galleries and Museums, would have supported the idea. And she speaks with some authority. For Mrs McLean (she used to be Isabel Mackintosh) was Dr Honeyman's devoted secretary as far back as 1939 and remembers his verbal jousts with Sir William Burrell. He would argue his case and seek to change Burrell's view on many a matter. But he knew to stop short of confrontation.

Isabel McLean's opinion, therefore, is that he would not have sought to alter the terms of the will which prevent the collection from going on loan. Like anecdotal evidence, how valuable is the living witness.

With a renewed sense of Robert Burns and the commonplace of his routine, I rode onwards on my mechanical horse, back to Glasgow to judge the Scots verse competition at the up-market Laurel Park School for Girls. I doubt if many of those budding young ladies would hear a word of Burns's Lowland Scots within the home; but the Bard would have been proud of the delicacy with which they treated his exquisite verse. It included ''O whistle and I'll come tae ye my lad'', which reminded me that we were in the season of St Valentine, the man who didn't so much lose his head in love but lost it at the guillotine of the Romans, poor chap.

So, in a week of bustling activity and mixed fortunes, I headed for the Valentine's Day lunch of Eastwood Probus Club, bearing a message of romance for the ladies who were invited along once a year.

Having now recovered from the confusion of Carnwath, I tackled the final engagement of the week. Milton of Campsie, just north of Glasgow, would be a dawdle. Thirty minutes at the most.

Well, I found Springburn and Bishopbriggs with ease. But on a wet and windy night I missed that sign to Kirkintilloch, landed first in Lenzie and thereafter on the outskirts of Cumbernauld.

When I finally reached Milton of Campsie, 90 minutes after leaving Glasgow, nobody knew the location of the WRI hall. In another hall, I intruded upon a kirk session meeting and pleaded for some Christian consideration. Could somebody, please, get me to the WRI?

They did - and though I was disgustingly late, the Rural ladies gave me an ovation of relief. They were ready to be entertained. And after I found breath from the second directional disaster of the week, we had one of those gloriously uproarious nights.

What a wonderful audience! And now I have sent away for a large-scale map of Scotland.