LAST weekend, as the snowfields slowly melted and a wet blanket of fog enveloped the region, I was driving along the A1(M) at Scotch Corner in a law-abiding speed limit-obeying fashion, as ever, in my new car.

Since I chronicled the demise of my beloved 12-year-old Mondeo in this column – it expired in Leeds with 135,000 miles on the clock and had to be towed to a scrapyard back in Darlington – a lot of people have been asking about what has replaced it.

I set about the car-buying process with due diligence, taking opinions, doing research, but after I visited my third forecourt, I was bored. I do not know a Dacia from a daschund, so I plumped for one because it was made in Sunderland so I could bring my agony to an end.

It comes with an unfathomable array of gadgetry, and last Sunday, knowing that the A1(M) at Scotch Corner is governed by an average speed trap, I decided to get to grips with setting the cruise control, which keeps the car moving at a specified speed, and the speed limiter, which prevents the car from going above a certain speed.

It’s a fiddly process, and as I battled with my buttons, I noticed the rest of the road whizzing by me heedless of any kind of speed control. They’ll wish they had my technology, I laughed, when the unescapable camera catches them.

I presumed the fog was obscuring the roadworks signs, until it dawned that, after three years and countless prosecutions, the limit had been lifted. What joy! No need for gadgetry, and away we went...

There was still a short 50mph stretch at Catterick, but without having to wonder about how to control my cruise, I came to consider Scotch Corner – a strange name for a characterless corner that is more than 100 miles south of the Scottish border.

It is said that before the M6 was built on the west side of the country, all travellers bound for Scotland would journey up the A1 to avoid using the A6 which climbed to 1,400ft over the notorious Shap Fell. Once those travellers reached Scotch Corner, those heading for Edinburgh and the east would continue straight on, while those destined for Glasgow and the west would take the trans-Pennine A66. They would still have to climb 1,380ft over the notorious Stainmore which must have been just as daunting as Shap.

So perhaps another theory is needed. It is also said that the corner was the most southerly place to which Scottish farmers would drive their cattle, sheep and geese before selling them. Therefore travellers from the south would arrive to find the corner lined by a lot of Scotchmen, hence the name.

MY quest to understand the meaning of “Aclet”, the original name for Auckland, has taken many twists and turns, and I am grateful to Ann Oliver, of Sedgefield WI, for telling me that in her day at Bishop Auckland Girls Grammar School, the four houses all had old place names: Aclet, Dunelm (Durham), Ediscum (Escomb) and Vinovium (Binchester). I am also grateful to her for sweetly singing the school song, which included the line “on the hill above the river where the oaks of Auckland grew”. So according to BAGS, Auckland is officially the land of oaks.