Visiting the UK (General)

by mrsbruso , Saturday, March 24, 2012, 13:39 (4622 days ago) @ charwatkin

Actually, the shift works the same way in both places, with the clutch to the left of the brake and the gas to the right. The shift itself works in a similar fashion, although like in the US the pattern may be slightly different for each car manufacturer. (For example, on older VWs reverse was up and right rather than down.)

The switch is much easier than you think. Just keep your body to the middle of the road, which is going to be second nature anywhere.

It's not just that distances tend to take longer in the UK in general. If I had to do it again, I would have made more and longer stops when something struck my fancy. I don't think it ever ocurred to me that there would come a time when I wasn't travelling back and forth on a regular basis. There are things I really miss about living in the UK that didn't seem to matter as much at the time.

I don't know if it is still this way in the Forest, but I have never encountered kinder people anywhere. Maybe because folks still remembered my immediate family and were asking for news of this one or that one, I heard "welcome home" a lot. I think now, a generation later, I would feel more like a stranger than I did then. (I think I had tea with every elderly woman in the village.)

Some of my happiest discoveries came from allowing myself to get lost. (Gee, I wonder where this goes?) I wish I knew where it were, I was going from Blakeney to Cardiff, and came around a curve and saw the Severn below and some very pretty houses coming up the hill. I would have stopped to take a picture, but a lorry had broken down and the traffic was restricted. I tried making the journey again on goggle to see if I could find it -- but haven't met with any success -- yet. I'm wondering now if that particular drive might have taken me past the Wye, or even the sea. Or maybe I had been to Gloucester and started from there . . .

I guess my point is that I would recommend a certain amount of wandering off the beaten path.

Some cell phones have GPS functions, so you should see if yours does. My garmin does both the US and the UK but last week it tried to send me down a discontinued (dirt) road in mud season. If you have a smart phone, even if it doesn't have GPS you can access goggle maps, which could be helpful.