......The only real problem with the car was the lack of cupholders.
Sports note: There was almost no coverage of the Winter Olympics in Britain while it was on. In the three papers I bought while the olympics were still on there was a total of two stories concerning them. Both were about Alberto Tomba crashing. However, a week before the Formula 1 season began, each paper had a multi-page special section on Grande Prix racing. Once you've driven for any length of time in Britain, it's easy to see why.
Britain is a country built for drivers. I believe I've mentioned in a previous message that speed limits etc. are beyond the ken of your average North American. And while the major motorways are quite well-designed with good on-off ramps and multiple lanes etc., every other road is a free-for-all. It is considered quite normal to have a one lane road with blind corners and no shoulders or guard rails with a speed limit of 60 mph and no warning signs of any kind. Just think of your average one-way logging road, remove all signs, rip out the radio and replace the logging trucks with double-decker buses going both ways instead of one way and you have your typical secondary highway in Britain. Well, actually, there's very little ice here and a lot more hedges and sheep.
Anyway, my point is there was an investigative TV report about all the road accidents in Britain and what could be done about them and the only thing that they could come up with is that they had to teach people to drive better. This is a country where to get your bus license you have to put a double decker bus into a controlled skid on wet pavement and then straighten it out again. In Canada, for those of you unaware of the requirements, you basically have to be able to back a bus into a driveway that would be about the size of your average secondary highway in Britain. I would wager your average bus driver in Canada wouldn't be able to put a rear-wheel drive sports car into a skid on wet pavement, never mind a double-decker bus.
Just driving around London is a sport that requires more finesse, skill and stamina than most olympic events. I think that's where I started with all this so we'll just finish it there. Bottom line: it's a cool country to drive around in. I enjoyed it, my mother didn't have a heart attack, and no one honked at us.
Getting out of London went comparatively smoothly. I thought I had planned it fairly carefully on the map but the map didn't indicate one-ways which conspired to screw us around a bit so I ended up just following spidey sense which worked out fine. We took a big motorway as far as Oxford which is a very old beautiful city where everyone rides bicycles and thinks they're smarter than Stephen Hawkings because he had to settle for a job at Cambridge. My mum and I had a pint in the Kings Arms which is now one of my favourite pubs. It is convoluted and rambling and multi-roomed and has pictures of the Queen Mom slamming back a Guiness on the wall.
We sat at the same table as a trio of bizarre eggheads. One was the dweebiest looking Englishman in the country. One was a very round Frenchman with an enormous beard, and one was an intense, almost psychotic looking Finnish woman. The two men spent the entire time ranting about some 15th century astronomer with radical ideas and an artisitic bent whose works were to be posted on an internet site and how this would surely revolutionize the entire world because only a handful of living scholars had been able to see for themselves this guy's incredible vision as no copies of his illustrations had ever been published. Or words to that effect. I'm not sure how important to the world this will really be since they seemed to be equally passionate about the shellfish they ate at a conference in North Carolina.
The point is: when in Oxford , you should have a pint in the King's Arms and toast the Queen Mum.
We also hit the original Blackwell's Bookshop in Oxford where the staff were very helpful. We also went to some very famous building that I can't remember the name of which was ably guarded by the most elegant security guard I have ever seen. He was roughly 120 years old with a white moustache and white hair. He was wearing an impeccable suit with a thousand dollar cashmere overcoat and a bowler hat. He also had the ubiquitous little earpiece-thingy that all security guards have and he unbelievably politely but absoluted deterred hundreds of tourists an hour from entering the gates of this establishment. The should just have had this guy at the gates to Poland in the 30's and the second world war would never have happened.
After our adventures in Oxford we took secondary roads to Vicki's where we had a very challenging time finding somewhere for my mother to stay. But she ended up in a great room, view of the castle, yada yada yada. I, as per usual, slept on Vicki's floor. And it's time for me to slump there now.
It seems I haven't been able to come close to catching up on my adventures so I will endeavor to continue them on my return to the New World. For a quick rundown on upcoming events:
Driving part of the trip:
London with the Momster
London with the Vickster
Up North with the Vickster
Yada yada yada
Cheers,
Chris
"Hush ye, hush ye
Dinna fret ye
The Black Douglas 'll no get ye"-- old English lullabye.