Entered on 2002-03-13 at 8:21 a.m..
Driving in Britian
This past weekend Brian and I ventured down to the south coast of Britian to enjoy the sunshine and to visit two castles. Because of the ruralness of the places we wanted to visit, I suggested to Brian that we drive down. To his credit he kept his calm, and did not visibly show any signs of fear. The route looked simple enough, just motor ways all the way until almost the very end.
Correspondingly we did very well, the little purple raindrop and I with Brian navigating until almost the very end. At that point the directions we had to our lodgings did not mesh with reality. I have found this often to be the case. Any country that lables its streets solely by the next little town that you will come to if you stay on this road, is bound to have problmes. For instance when approaching the motorway (british word for highway) that circles London, M25, from the south your two options are H'row or G'wik. Now if you don't know that those abreviations mean Heathrow and Gatwick international airport and don't know that Gatwick is south of the city and Heathrow is east, you are in trouble.
Our directions stated rather clearly that we were to get off the A338 (the road we were currently on) at the second exit, Fitzsomthing round about. Well the second exit off of the A338 was not the Fitzsomething roundabout, nor was the 3rd, 4th and so on. Eventually we even managed to come to the end of the A338 and lacking any other idea, get back on it going the opposite way. What we didn't realize that the block we had just driven around was actually known as the Fitzsomething roundabout and had we taken the second exit off of it, we would have been where we needed to be. All this dispite having called our accomidation once to get better directions :)
So somehow we wound up in downtown Poole, found a parking space and headed to the nearest tourist information center. We had followed signs for the TIC into Poole with one purpose in mind, to find a map.
With map in hand things were slightly better, but there was still the occasional conversation as we approached a roundabout:
K: Which way?
B: Uh, neither of these places is on the map...
THE LPR is actually sitting at the round about now with traffic piling up behind us.
K: Now would be a good time to make a decision...
B: I don't know.
K: For goodness sake, make something up!
B: Go right
K: Ok,
AS we leave the roundabout
B: Nope that was wrong we needed to go left
Needless to say I don't think Brian will ever drive with me at the wheel again:)
On Sunday we watched Four Weddings and A Funeral on TV. If any of you remember the opening sequence where Hugh Grant is late for a wedding and they have to take his sister's mini. There is one scene which will forever remind me of our trip this weekend, where blazing down thw motor way in a car never destined to go above 40mph, they miss their exit because they cannot find it on the map, slam on the breaks and reverse down the motorway to get off at the right place. When I say that scene on Sunday I nearly fell off my chair, I was laughing so hard.