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<\/a><\/p>\nA LONG TRIP – it was 16 days.\u00a0 I felt that, if we were going for that length of time, we were going to see a lot.\u00a0 I opted to drive all around the UK and see a little bit of a lot of things, rather than staying in one place and seeing everything that one spot had to offer.\u00a0 Was it right or the best?\u00a0 Probably not, but we got to see a lot. \u00a0 And in fact, I liked London the least of all – and we were there for 4 nights. I was told “you’ll never make it” when I described what our plans were before the trip – but we did – and we saw most of the things I had planned, not all, but we did add a few that weren’t planned.<\/p>\n
<\/a>The black dots are where we spent the night: Dublin, Port Isaac, Bristol, Carlisle, Loch Lomond, Inverness, Kirkwall, Inverness, Edinburgh, York, Ingrave, and 4 nights in London.<\/p><\/div>\n
AGE – The US doesn’t have or know “old”.\u00a0 Our old buildings and such are no newer than our statehood, generally.\u00a0 On our east coast, there are buildings approaching 300 years old, for sure, but over there – we were in many fully functional buildings that were built BEFORE there were British colonies in North America. \u00a0 Even if the buildings weren’t functional, it was amazing to think that “people were actively in this spot, with their functioning civilization, a thousand years ago” – or even older in some of the prehistoric sites.<\/p>\n
<\/a>St. Kevin’s Church. Glendalough, Ireland. 12th Century church. St. Kevin lived in this very remote area in the 7th century and is became a pilgrimage location and center of learning, even as remote as it is.<\/p><\/div>\n
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<\/a>St. Paul’s Catherdral, London. Built in the late 1600’s by Christopher Wren. There had been an church of some sort on that site since the 7th century.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>The remains of Tintagel Castle, Cornwall. It is amazing to think there was a thriving castle and community on this remote rock. There are dozens of foundations up there. What effort it took to get supplies there.<\/p><\/div>\n
PEOPLE – virtually everyone we encountered was pleasant, polite and helpful (except for one attendant at St Paul’s Cathedral in London).\u00a0 There were less obese people there than here.\u00a0 Maybe that has to do with the fact that they don’t seem to mind walking places and walking a lot – or riding bicycles.\u00a0 Oh, and many people have dogs and walk with them everywhere.\u00a0 Dogs seem to enjoy a higher status over there – and they are well-behaved, too.\u00a0 In fact, one of the most touching memorials we\u00a0 saw was near Hyde Park – a memorial to Animals in War.\u00a0 As it says, millions of animals, from pigeons to elephants have been used in war and “they had no choice”.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Animals in War memorial, London.<\/p><\/div>\n
WEATHER – our weather was VERY cooperative.\u00a0 We did have some light rain while driving through the Scottish Highlands, but it was neither unexpected nor surprising and it didn’t detract from the trip.\u00a0 Most of the time the weather was mild with clouds and sometimes it was even sunny.\u00a0 The temps ranged from a low of 11C on a couple of mornings to 24C in London.\u00a0 That’s roughly 50F-75F.\u00a0 We brought light jackets and no shorts and that proved to be the right call.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Glen Etive. Scottish Highlands<\/p><\/div>\n
DRIVING – Driving had me worried.\u00a0 I had never driven on the left before.\u00a0 I started to pay attention when we got to Ireland – I did no driving there, but knew I would have to get used to what I was seeing.\u00a0 The road signs are different and took some interpreting.\u00a0 I had the trip all planned, with Google text printouts of every day.\u00a0 They were somewhat useful, but would not have done the job.\u00a0 When we rented our car, we opted out of a manual transmission – one less thing to worry about (I can drive a manual with no problems, but combine the shifter on the left with driving on the left and I thought it just might be too much at once).\u00a0 The choice of an automatic changed the type of car – we got a Nissan SUV and with that came a Navigation system.\u00a0 That Nav system proved to be the real hero of the trip.\u00a0 It worked great and held my hand the whole trip.\u00a0 I only made a couple of wrong turns and we were generally on time everywhere we went.<\/p>\n
Driving on the left – it is strange sitting on the wrong side of the car and driving on the wrong side of the road.\u00a0 Within a mile or two of the airport, I was on a freeway and that made things a little easier, except I tended to drift to the left and it wasn’t natural to put the right side of the car along the right side line on the road.\u00a0 All drivers respect the lane assignments, that is, stay in the slower lane and only change lanes to pass.\u00a0 Very, very few people ride in the outer lanes for any period of time, except where there is heavier traffic and it is obvious that you are going faster than the inner lanes.<\/p>\n
Roundabouts are easier than US people think and they flow smoothly.\u00a0 You just have to know where you want to exit the roundabout -and that is where the GPS really helped us.\u00a0 “Exit the roundabout at the third exit and continue on the A40” – a typical GPS command.\u00a0 We would watch the route numbers painted on the lanes approaching the roundabout, get it the proper lane,\u00a0 wait for a gap in traffic, enter and start counting exits.\u00a0 The traffic tended to naturally move outward as you approached the desired exit and I really have very few problems – I think once I almost entered into the path of a car, and only once had an issue of begin in the wrong lane.\u00a0 I did miss an exit once, also, but it was a simple matter to just continue around.\u00a0 Roundabouts are EVERYWHERE – at nearly every intersection of any significance, even on streets in towns.\u00a0 In fact, the only real problem I had with them was when they stacked two on top of each other in a town.\u00a0 Think of a five-point intersection where there was not one, but two small roundabouts adjacent to each other.\u00a0 Rather than cutting through the middle where I was told to go (and I couldn’t see how with the heavy traffic) I just went around the double outside until I got where I needed to be.\u00a0 Roundabouts help with traffic flow.\u00a0 all people keep moving and no one stops at an intersection, unless the heavy traffic has dictated that stop lights are necessary on the entrances.\u00a0 There should be more roundabouts here in the states.<\/p>\n
One thing I never got used to was turning at a regular T or cross intersection.\u00a0 If I had to turn left,I had to remember to stay on the inside and it was quite unnerving to start to turn and see a car coming at you in the outside lane – right where they were supposed to be, but right where I would be over here.\u00a0 Also, right turns were equally anxious – you have to turn, crossing traffic – into the lane were 40 years of driving has taught me there will be oncoming traffic.\u00a0 It never became natural and every intersection like that caused me to concentrate to make sure I was going the right way.<\/p>\n
Backroads in England are just like you see on TV – high hedges on either side of the road and very narrow lanes – like the bushes are rubbing BOTH sides of the car.\u00a0 We even went through some where the bushes on the sides had grown together over the road so we were in a tunnel.\u00a0 This is quaint, but means you cannot see a) around curves and b) the countryside.<\/p>\n
<\/a>a backroad in Cornwall<\/p><\/div>\n
In fact, I would say, except for the main expressways, all lanes are narrower over there.\u00a0 A two-lane state highway equivalent seemed to be about as wide as our county roads – with hills and curves and bushes on the sides and an expected speed of 60 mph.<\/p>\n
The last bit on Driving – there are dozens and dozens of cars in England\/Europe that we never see.\u00a0 In fact, I rarely saw a car model that I recognized.\u00a0 And there just are not “big” cars – that is, anything larger than our mid-sized cars are very rare.\u00a0 We drove a Nissan SUV a Qashqai – apparently something similar to a Rogue here in the states.\u00a0 It had a diesel engine and I am sure it had a turbo.\u00a0 This was the first diesel car I have driven.\u00a0 I learned something – we have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to cars.\u00a0 Diesel cars are unusual here, but not there.\u00a0 The performance on this car was great.\u00a0 In addition, it got superb gas mileage.\u00a0 Take a look at these photos:<\/p>\n
The top is shortly after I got the car.\u00a0 We got it with 1700+ miles on it and returned it with about 4300.\u00a0 I reset the mileage after I took the top photo and for the rest of the trip I AVERAGED 48 MPG.\u00a0 The second shows the best average MPG for a section of the trip – 55 MPG.\u00a0 Even after converting from Imperial gallons, that means 45mpg peak and 40mpg average.\u00a0 Why aren’t we, as a country, demanding this type of mileage our of our cars?\u00a0 We’ve been sold a bill of goods.<\/p>\n We saw a lot of things, many more than I can possibly share in this post and it is already too long.\u00a0 It was a good trip.\u00a0 But now I have to get back to the model aviation business!\u00a0 Oh, no aviation museums, no flying contests, no hobby shops – nothing like that on this trip.<\/p>\n Building repair work in London. It seemed like nearly every block had some construction like this. I wish I had ownership of a Scaffolding Company in London – I’d be set for life.<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is not modeling related, but I thought I would share some high-level details of our 2-week driving trip through the UK.\u00a0 As I said, this will be very high level and impressions, as a 16-day trip has too many … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>