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Editors Pick

Driving on the left and other impressions of England

From Wet, windy and suburned or 3 weeks in England in United Kingdom on Jun 08 '06

MilesToGo has visited no places in United Kingdom
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Driving on the left wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, but I certainly did have to focus more (not a bad thing when you're driving).  The hardest part was judging the distance to my left, e.g. the cars parked on that side of the road.  The rest was pretty straightforward.  There were always cars driving towards me on the right so I wasn't about to veer over that way.  I did have a couple of incidents of pulling to the right side of a car park or ticket booth, but other than that it all went well.  I would do it again, but I guess the real question is would my navigator?  My navigator did an excellent job and if possible I would suggest that you have one.  While I was negotiating roundabouts she was looking for signs and at the road map.  We could have rented a GPS, but then where would be the adventure?

Television - OK, I can firmly state that the US is not the only country with bad TV.  Most of the places we stayed all we had was BBC, which does offer some unique shows.  However, inflicting Eurovision and X-Factor Battle of Stars on unsuspecting tourists is just vicious.  We did, however, enjoy Alan Titchmarsh live from the Chelsea Flower Show, the cook-off to find the chefs for the Queen's Birthday dinner (although the chef using the Indian/British fusion was robbed), Springwatch was certainly different and the Egghead get all the easy questions.

The British have a reputation for being reserved and while they didn't throw their arms around us, they were friendly and helpful and frequently spoke to us first.

Beautiful country with so much history you literally can't turn around without seeing something of historical interest.

We had a wonderful time and fully expect to go back someday.  After all we didn't make it to Cornwall, Wales, the Lake District, York, or Scotland.

"Remember what Bilbo used to say: It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”


 

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