Posted by RichardG on June 16, 2004 at 14:14:17 from 81.134.147.10 user RichardG.
In Reply to: Re: The Wade posted by Ross Cossar on June 15, 2004 at 13:07:23:
Ross
Driving in the U.K. is a very variable experience. We have motorway speed limits of 70 mph which are generally stretched by most motorists to around 85-90 mph unless police cars or speed cameras are visible. We also have regular lane closures due to accidents or maintenance work, the latter often resulting in reduction of the limit to 50 mph or lower.
Most towns and villages straddling trunk roads have 30 mph limits which are enforced by a plethora of speed cameras. In between for single carriageways the limit is 60 mph and often overtaking is difficult - so getting behind a slow lorry can lengthen your journey.
Trying to get from one side of London to the other by car involves either heavy traffic with traffic lights set to slow down traffic movement (by diktat of the recently re-elected Mayor) if you try and go through the middle, or hoping that the circular motorway, the M25, is not having one of those days when it is more of a very long thin car park than a moving highway.
Having decided to travel by car anyway, on arriving at the other end you mostly find that parking spaces are either non-existent or exorbitantly expensive.
I regularly drive the 230 miles from West London to Mid Wales; depending on day of the week, time of day, time of year, and traffic and weather conditions, this can take anything between 3 1/4 and 5 hours. Thus generally trying to plan a journey in the UK on an average number of miles traversed in an hour is an extremely inexact exercise.
From West London a journey to Norfolk, Suffolk, or Essex is not something to be undertaken lightly on a moment's whim - it encompasses all the things that make driving in the UK difficult !
(By the way - what's wrong with Ottawa - I enjoyed my visit there back in 1978 - good outdoor concert by the Eagles followed by a visit to a take-away pizza place still baking at 1 a.m. - something that you would be unlikely to find anywhere in the U.K. By contrast, trying to find a meal in a pub or similar after 9 p.m. in the Lake District is, in my experience, a fruitless exercise)