Driving in England 2

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.

Navigating English roads

England does not have the system of interstate highways that we are used to in the US, that make traveling long distances so easy. Unfortunately, every few miles, the highway is broken up with roundabout circles. At a small scale, these are easy to navigate. Unfortunately, on the English highways, some of the circles are large, sometimes with 4 or 5 lanes entering from each side, and you must choose the correct lane or else you won’t be able to exit the roundabout where you want. One of my first experiences with this was up in Oxford, where I was in a lane too far to the left, and therefore had to exit the circle before my desired exit. We have also taken a lane too far to the right, though that turned out better, since we just took an extra turn around the roundabout, turning a full 360 and tried again.

As you approach a circle, you must plan carefully where you want to exit and figure out which lane you want to be in. A few general rules of thumb:

• If you will be exiting the circle at the first exit, choose the left lane.
• If you will be exiting the circle at the last exit, choose the right lane.

Unfortunately, not every circle has a corresponding entry lane for each exit, so then it is just a matter of being very alert and trying to figure it out as you approach. If you have another adult along as a navigator, she can help, but don’t get too upset if she cannot give you the directions you require, since she will be as confused as you. If you take a wrong turn, laugh about it and enjoy the view.

I know in another post I suggested you might want to save a little money on your car rental by renting a manual transmission. However, I strongly recommend that you pay the extra money to get GPS in your rental. England is not like the US, where you get on a freeway and follow it to your chosen exit. It would have taken us twice as long to get around without a GPS, since we would have taken lots of wrong turns and gotten lost. The GPS not only saved us from taking a lot of wrong turns, it helped a lot in figuring out which exit to take out of a roundabout, and when we did take a wrong turn, it directed us back on track to our destination. We had prepared for driving in England by printing out directions in Google Maps, but these only help so long as you follow them exactly. Once you go off-track, you are lost.

One surprise to me was that distances and speeds are measured in miles and miles per hour, instead of kilometers and km/h. I had been led to believe that America was the last hold-out against the metric system, but apparently, the customary system is alive and well in England. The top speed limit I encountered in England was 70 mph, so driving speeds are comparable to those in the US. However, I am under the impression that speed limits are more strictly enforced in England than they are in most of the US, since most cars stayed at the speed limit.

Also, if you’re driving the nice English country roads — and I recommend that you do, since they are beautiful — remember that many of them predate the invention of the automobile, and have since been paved, but not widened. Some one-lane roads require you to pull over when you meet oncoming traffic so you can pass each other. In general, drivers are quite polite in this matter, and you should be, too. This situation can also occur on some two-lane roads where cars are parked alongside.