I lost a bet with my wife. A few days ago, she told me the Tour de France was going on in Yorkshire while we are there. I told her that was not possible, since the Tour de France took place in France. So now I owe her a bottle of wine.
Yes, the Tour de France does start in Yorkshire this year, so on Friday, the day before the race started, we were stuck in traffic with a million other people. It was extremely slow going, and we arrived in Richmond a good 3 hours later than we should have.
It’s been years since I’ve navigated stop-and-go traffic in a stick-shift, and that clutch sure does get a lot of action. However, my main complaint about British drivers in heavy traffic is that they are immature. As a foreigner in England, it is to be expected that once or twice you’ll find yourself in the wrong lane. When we did, if I signaled and tried to merge into the lane I needed, the car behind me already in that lane would accelerate to prevent me from merging. I always think this is funny, because (1) on a road with a million other cars, one car is not going to significantly change your arrival time, and (2) because when this happens the logical next step is to move forward one car and try to merge in front of it, so the car that refused to let you in is still no better off than he would have been if he’d just let me in.
Anyway, some people said the M1 motorway is typically bad on a Friday afternoon, so adding in the Tour de France traffic just made it horrendous. My recommendation, if you’re driving up to The North, don’t do it on a Friday, and definitely don’t do it on the Friday before the start of the Tour de France if that start is happening in Yorkshire.
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