I like to drive, so it should not come as a surprise that many of my holidays involve driving somewhere, even if it is just from the airport. On my first trip to England to visit in-laws I had never met, I arranged for a car. To hear the carrying on you’d have thought I committed a major sin of some type. I heard it all; you’ve never driven here and we do things differently.
I admit it, England is different from the rest of Europe, wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road and all that. I did brush up on my British driving rules and found out about speed cameras, M roads, dual carriage ways, A roads, B roads and quite a few other of the finer points of English driving. My friends continued telling me that there was no way I could do this, I had never been there. The litany went on and on to the point where I got an ear ache.
The plane lands and my reserved car isn’t ready, no substitute is available. Now for an emergency call to the in-law for a ride to his house. The hour and a half wait gave me a good chance to work things out with the car company. My wheels would be delivered to the house the next day.
From there on the vacation was great. It took me a couple of days to get things sorted in the car and with a few hours of seat time, I considered myself a good novice. I also found that the British did take down all the road signs in Kent during WWll and only put half of them back up. My wife and I had a wonderful time exploring while trying to figure out where we were. One example of how well my map challenged wife did was that we wound up at a small beach close to Dover when we were actually aiming for Dover. The tea hut was open and we were able to hike all through the cliffs and fields of the area. It was a glorious and sunny day, much better spent outside than in some museum.
We now make sure that we have a car reserved when we go. We do use the train and the bus when convenient, but having our own independence for transport is great. I don’t listen to the boo hooers who keep telling me it is too difficult or dangerous. I figure that if it is my holiday, I shouldn’t have to sit in a bus seat all day long looking at things I could care less about.
I admit it, England is different from the rest of Europe, wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road and all that. I did brush up on my British driving rules and found out about speed cameras, M roads, dual carriage ways, A roads, B roads and quite a few other of the finer points of English driving. My friends continued telling me that there was no way I could do this, I had never been there. The litany went on and on to the point where I got an ear ache.
The plane lands and my reserved car isn’t ready, no substitute is available. Now for an emergency call to the in-law for a ride to his house. The hour and a half wait gave me a good chance to work things out with the car company. My wheels would be delivered to the house the next day.
From there on the vacation was great. It took me a couple of days to get things sorted in the car and with a few hours of seat time, I considered myself a good novice. I also found that the British did take down all the road signs in Kent during WWll and only put half of them back up. My wife and I had a wonderful time exploring while trying to figure out where we were. One example of how well my map challenged wife did was that we wound up at a small beach close to Dover when we were actually aiming for Dover. The tea hut was open and we were able to hike all through the cliffs and fields of the area. It was a glorious and sunny day, much better spent outside than in some museum.
We now make sure that we have a car reserved when we go. We do use the train and the bus when convenient, but having our own independence for transport is great. I don’t listen to the boo hooers who keep telling me it is too difficult or dangerous. I figure that if it is my holiday, I shouldn’t have to sit in a bus seat all day long looking at things I could care less about.