Driving in England

Whilst hiring (renting) a car to drive in England there are many thoughts going through your head all at the same time. Some of which are … “This will this be exciting, different and thrilling”. There are also parallel thoughts that overlap your first thoughts and those would be –“This is going to be frightening, unfamiliar and terrifying”. All of these are true and correct descriptive words. When the keys are handed over to you, I wonder what the rental car agency must be thinking. Perhaps – Good luck sucker? Although I was added onto the rental agreement as a secondary driver, the thought of driving in the UK was not really appealing to me at all. We got our car loaded up, plugged in the Tom-tom (GPS) and headed out. In England they have roundabouts – (this is in lieu of off ramps – and they can happen while you are driving on the freeway) when you get to one it feels as if all the cars are gushing into a whirlwind circular drive without much concern except to exit at their desired point. We soon learned that the blue arrow urging you onto the roundabout should be taken as a stop and look before entering arrow. We made it out of the city and onto the motorway (freeway) without too many hitches. For me, as a passenger, in what I felt like should have been the driver’s seat was a total nerve-wracking almost out of body experience. I would look into the cars next to me and see a person reading a book in what I thought should have been the driver seat; I would do a double take and remember they were the passenger and I was in England. I had to get used to this, and it took some time, to say the least. As for Dave – the driver – well, lane position seemed to be the biggest optical obstacle. I kept saying “you’re too far to the left” Dave would reply, “No I’m not” and then we would feel the bumps that separated the lanes under our tires – thump – thump – thump … Can you say Nora was correct? Our rental car seemed to graze many left side curbs over the next three weeks of UK driving. Our destination the first day was a five hour drive – as we edged our way out of the city, down the London motorway the landscape gradually changed and the scenery began to transform into soft rolling green hills – that melting into farmlands where fluffy sheep grazed by the roadside and I truly felt like I was in England.

More to come, Cheers~ Nora