Rsgwynn1
Silver Level Sponsor
My wife and I just completed our 4-day, 30th anniversary driving trip. We went from London Gatwick to Canterbury, Dover, Rye, Portsmouth, Salisbury, and into London. No serious incidents but a few nasty looks at roundabouts and intersections. If you've never driven over there, a few observations:
Upgrading to a gps-enabled car is a must. Even with road atlases we would have been hopelessly confused by the direction signs. We upgraded to a Mercedes (auto and air) at Europcar. The clerk didn't tell me that it had Sat Nav and, thus, we couldn't get to Brooklands from Gatwick, having to get lost and settle for a tour of Hampton Court instead. The next day I pressed a button on the console, and, lo, the Sat Nav operator spake unto me from above! After that, clear sailing. After three days, we felt confident about driving into London, even though we got stuck with exorbitant public parking fees near our hotel (close to Harrod's).
Once you get the knack, roundabouts (they're everywhere) should present small problem. Only problem is that direction signs are hard to read at first, and you don't have any time to take them in as you hurtle toward Your Destiny. Sat Nav, of course, was a great help here, telling me which exit I should take.
If you have, say, the third exit on a roundabout, you need to be very careful about lanes. This kind of interchange means that you should enter the roundabout in the inside lane and then work out to the outer one for the exit. Can be tricky.
Think before making a turn at an intersection (especially a right turn), even if you have to hold up traffic for a few seconds. I made two exits that almost went into the wrong lane (force of habit).
A book I read put the whole matter very clearly: in England driving is based on momentum; in America, on inertia. In other words, traffic is compelled to keep moving in England, which means that you'll have to be on your toes reading signs (there's rarely a place to pull off and think things over). Here, we're accustomed to stopping and starting (lights, stop/yield signs).
On secondary roads, especially through villages, pay less attention to lane markings than to the road ahead. I found that folks park anywhere (even against the flow) and cars often jut well out into your lane, forcing you to swerve around them. You can be forced into a lane of approaching traffic if you're not careful.
If you rent a car, make sure it has the owner's manual before you leave the rental. Mine didn't, and I had some trouble figuring out how the dash controls worked!
Parking anywhere is at a premium. Sat Nav can direct you to public car parks. Pay close attention to the signs as well. I moved to car in front of our London hotel to load luggage the last day we were there. Put six pounds into the machine for a couple of hours, placed the ticket on the dash, and still got a fifty pound ticket? Why? I was parking in a resident's slot, not across the street where the metered parking applied. Sadder Budweiser.
One of our nicest drives was from our highwayside hotel in Canterbury (a Holiday Inn Express, of all things!) to a local pub for supper a few miles out in the country. It was one of those narrow country roads with a canopy of trees and hedges tunneling it. Very pretty, for a short drive. Otherwise, stick to the M's (motorways) as much as you can. Just like driving on an interstate here. I'd originally thought, having seen too many of those World's Worst Drivers clips on tv, that it would be best to stick to the secondary roads (the A's). It isn't. Things can get very slow and dicey. We drove from Dover to near Brighton on an A, through the rainest recorded June day in English history, and it was a little testy. Let's just say that my non-smoking pledge didn't survive that little jaunt!
Don't plan on doing much roadside sightseeing if you're the driver!
And, finally, don't listen to your wife's screams if they're different from what Sat Nav is telling you! We had a couple of issues here. Still, we're still married and, even more thankfully, still alive.
I kept an eye out for Sunbeams, but the vast majority of the cars on the roads (and there were a lot of them) were fairly new. No twenty-year-old Impalas belching smoke like you'd find here in Texas. Saw only one classic, a nicely purring Sprite at Stonehenge. Incidentally, there you can't park close to the ruins like Chevy Chase did, so don't worry about backing into a monolith and bringing the whole thing down like a row of dominoes.
Next time? France!
Sam
Upgrading to a gps-enabled car is a must. Even with road atlases we would have been hopelessly confused by the direction signs. We upgraded to a Mercedes (auto and air) at Europcar. The clerk didn't tell me that it had Sat Nav and, thus, we couldn't get to Brooklands from Gatwick, having to get lost and settle for a tour of Hampton Court instead. The next day I pressed a button on the console, and, lo, the Sat Nav operator spake unto me from above! After that, clear sailing. After three days, we felt confident about driving into London, even though we got stuck with exorbitant public parking fees near our hotel (close to Harrod's).
Once you get the knack, roundabouts (they're everywhere) should present small problem. Only problem is that direction signs are hard to read at first, and you don't have any time to take them in as you hurtle toward Your Destiny. Sat Nav, of course, was a great help here, telling me which exit I should take.
If you have, say, the third exit on a roundabout, you need to be very careful about lanes. This kind of interchange means that you should enter the roundabout in the inside lane and then work out to the outer one for the exit. Can be tricky.
Think before making a turn at an intersection (especially a right turn), even if you have to hold up traffic for a few seconds. I made two exits that almost went into the wrong lane (force of habit).
A book I read put the whole matter very clearly: in England driving is based on momentum; in America, on inertia. In other words, traffic is compelled to keep moving in England, which means that you'll have to be on your toes reading signs (there's rarely a place to pull off and think things over). Here, we're accustomed to stopping and starting (lights, stop/yield signs).
On secondary roads, especially through villages, pay less attention to lane markings than to the road ahead. I found that folks park anywhere (even against the flow) and cars often jut well out into your lane, forcing you to swerve around them. You can be forced into a lane of approaching traffic if you're not careful.
If you rent a car, make sure it has the owner's manual before you leave the rental. Mine didn't, and I had some trouble figuring out how the dash controls worked!
Parking anywhere is at a premium. Sat Nav can direct you to public car parks. Pay close attention to the signs as well. I moved to car in front of our London hotel to load luggage the last day we were there. Put six pounds into the machine for a couple of hours, placed the ticket on the dash, and still got a fifty pound ticket? Why? I was parking in a resident's slot, not across the street where the metered parking applied. Sadder Budweiser.
One of our nicest drives was from our highwayside hotel in Canterbury (a Holiday Inn Express, of all things!) to a local pub for supper a few miles out in the country. It was one of those narrow country roads with a canopy of trees and hedges tunneling it. Very pretty, for a short drive. Otherwise, stick to the M's (motorways) as much as you can. Just like driving on an interstate here. I'd originally thought, having seen too many of those World's Worst Drivers clips on tv, that it would be best to stick to the secondary roads (the A's). It isn't. Things can get very slow and dicey. We drove from Dover to near Brighton on an A, through the rainest recorded June day in English history, and it was a little testy. Let's just say that my non-smoking pledge didn't survive that little jaunt!
Don't plan on doing much roadside sightseeing if you're the driver!
And, finally, don't listen to your wife's screams if they're different from what Sat Nav is telling you! We had a couple of issues here. Still, we're still married and, even more thankfully, still alive.
I kept an eye out for Sunbeams, but the vast majority of the cars on the roads (and there were a lot of them) were fairly new. No twenty-year-old Impalas belching smoke like you'd find here in Texas. Saw only one classic, a nicely purring Sprite at Stonehenge. Incidentally, there you can't park close to the ruins like Chevy Chase did, so don't worry about backing into a monolith and bringing the whole thing down like a row of dominoes.
Next time? France!
Sam
