Before we went to Great Britain in September 2019, we decided that we wanted to drive through some of the countryside. I have driven on the left side of the road before, having visited and driven in Australia during the late-eighties. So I knew I could do it.
The difference is, in the eighties I was in my early thirties and in 2019 I am in my early sixties. Time has taken a toll on both my eyesight and reflex time. We won’t talk about the heart attack and arthritis. Needless to say I was more than a little apprehensive about driving there.
I tried to familiarize myself with the road signs and road markings. After a few hours of study, I figured that I was going to break a law about every mile or two, so I practiced my best “I’m a stupid colonial and ain’t never driven in a civilized country before, officer” look. Turns out, I didn’t need much practice.
We had been in Edinburg for a couple of days and had ridden buses almost everywhere. But now it was time to drive. We went to the Edinburgh airport and picked up a car from Hertz. And we got a Volvo! What a nice car. The ride is great, steering is crisp, and the navigation appears on the heads-up screen. (Never listened to the radio, way too distracting). If that car looked like my Ram Truck it would have been perfect.
We took the full coverage insurance…it’s pricey but so is a Volvo if you bend it. We’re in the car headed to Inverness. Let’s talk about that trip.
We were pulling out of the airport and I’m am trying to pay attention to everything at once. Of course that doesn’t work. The first thing I do is make a wrong turn. My elegant half is trying to help me get on the right road but, it’s only getting worse. The roads keep getting increasingly narrow. And my instincts are pushing the car to the left hand side of the left hand road. There is a car glued to my rear bumper and my head is on a swivel trying to see everything at once. The we come to a stone bridge with walls and my elegant half suddenly turns into a megaphone, “GET OVER”. I am a paint thickness away from scraping the mirror off my side and she insists that I am going to mangle the mirror on her side. In voice that was much too loud I said “I CAN’T” but she insists that I “GET OVER”.
Somehow, we manage to get across that 30 foot-long bridge without killing the car or each other. It took just a few seconds – we were crawling along – it just felt like a day and a half. But, I believe I have hearing loss in my left ear and my right eye, even today, has an annoying tic every time I drive across a bridge.
We are both nervous wrecks but somehow she manages to get us on the right highway to Inverness. Highway A9 is much like an American interstate. I stay in the left-most lane but the car has an annoying tendency to drift even further to the left…it’s not the car it’s me but, I’m telling the story and I’m blaming the car.
We cruise along in that lane except to pass slower traffic because the police take a dim view of right lane cruisers. You will get pulled over and you will get ticketed.
The car still had that tendency to drift to the left. I only got told to “get over” 4 or 50 times.
We decide to make a side trip to the Iain Burnett Highland Chocolatier (https://www.highlandchocolatier.com/). I am now an experienced left lane driver. Odin laughs and turns me over to Loki. These roads are tiny and who decided these roads need curbs? And why are roads six inches from a house? And where the hell did that wall come from? I think my elegant half got leg cramps from pushing on the “air” brakes. I white knuckled it for 20 minutes or 30 hours. We finally made it.
The people were very nice, the chocolate was smooth, we spent way too much money, and I would do it again in a minute. They had a little restaurant where we sipped hot chocolate and decompressed. Then it was back to the car and let the terror begin anew.
A quick assessment on roundabout intersections. They are initially scary. But the ones in GB are well marked and if you follow the rules of the road to are fairly safe. Traffic generally kept moving and people tended to go through them at sub-warp speed. After the first 1000 or so I was pretty comfortable going through them.
We finally made it to Inverness and parked the car. We checked in, took a break, and WALKED to a restaurant on a sidewalk without a curb.
Retired at Indian Lake 