I´ve never heard anything like that. But around the world there are a lot of absent minded people, so the new could be true. I have in my group of friend a person who lost in all the city that he visit. It doesn't matter if he has a map or not, so he normally travel with friends.
In that case the situation is different because she thought that she was in other country which is five hours by plane. She was in London, she need to cross the sea, and in turkey speak turkey and when she arrived to Torquay I don't think so that she heard that language. So, from my point of view, that new is a fake new. Maybe, like I read in other post, because they newspaper want to sell more or because the day they published it was Holy Innocents day.