Unable to edit content

One of the biggest frustrations I have with WP is not being able to edit content on some of my pages. I waste hours searching for a way to edit content that seems to have appeared of its own volition. My web site (Sorry I can’t show you it yet as I am still working on it) has a historical trail with 17 sites to visit. There is a page for each site with text and images. On the front page introducing this trail there is a widget menu in the sidebar with links to each of the sites. However, near the bottom of the page in the main body text, headers for 4 out of the 17 sites have appeared. Numbers 1, 12, 2, and 4. Had I have entered them myself I would at least have put them in order but I know I didn’t. These headers have the first line of text for each page and an image from the page to the left and a ‘View page’ button to the right, which links to the page.

There is no evidence of this Menu, slide bar, gallery, whatever it is, in the html text. And that’s what I find so deeply frustrating and wastes so much of my time trying to locate those things in order to edit them. I’m told Oh no, you mustn’t use a program like Dreamweaver to edit pages and then import them, but when I can’t access content in my pages I’m tempted to go down that route. At least I would see everything that’s on the page.

I have a street map two thirds of the way down the page within the body text. I want the menu I mentioned before for the trail, to be alongside this map in the widget area. But without having to place other widgets above it to bring it down I have no way of manipulating the position of this Menu. I can choose position number 3 but that only works if you have other widgets in positions 1 and 2. And yes, I know I can use html to manipulate text; embolden, italicise etc. but I can’t see the html to edit in the widget sidebar like I can in the main body text.

It’s unnecessary time consuming moving me ever closer to thinking I should be looking for an easier option or at least one that makes the kind of sense that WP doesn’t.