Today I drove in England. Yesterday, I drove to my uncle’s in the Scottish lowlands and picked up my uncle. First thing this morning, he, Scout & I piled into the Corsa, and we headed south to Kent. I was quite nervous about this altho driving the motorways isn’t all that stressful because (a) when you think about it, all traffic is going in the same direction, and (b) I have 30+ years of GTA/401 driving under my belt. But I would be hitting the major ring road around London at rush hour and, I was little worried about my 90 year old uncle sitting in a car for 8+ hours.
It was clear and sunny and the landscape was gorgeous – we stopped at a pretty impressive service centre: Tebay rest stop is so famous there’s been a documentary made about it. But poor Uncle Ian; I was so freaked about getting south that we grabbed 2 coffees, 2 muffins and were back on the road in 15 minutes.
We kept going, crossed the Scottish border, over the Mersey, past the higher traffic cities like Manchester and Birmingham, through Oxfordshire, past Heathrow, and onto the M25 ring road south of London. The traffic was light(ish), the weather was great, and the service stations had pretty good food – on the whole, a much better day than anticipated. More and more of the U.K. is opening up to us!