Tag Archives: London

Travel

25 Sunday May 2025

Posted by in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

It certainly broadens the mind, but it doesn’t get any easier with age.

We just made one of our now fairly frequent trips across the Atlantic Ocean, from Toronto to London. The prospect of four weeks in the land of my birth is an enticing one, obviously, but it starts with that overnight flight, and getting over that seems to take longer each time.

Of course, air travel has revolutionised the world. My ancestors who made the trip from England to North America rarely had the opportunity to make even one trip back to their homeland, so I do recognise my good fortune, but that’s hard to remember when you can’t make simple decisions after an almost sleepless overnight flight.

We always start our trips with a three to four hour drive up Canada’s busiest highway, the Ontario 401. Mostly it’s just a chore, but this time the weather was horrible, low cloud and rain, and that resulted in collision-related delays. We had allowed a big dollop of wiggle room on timing, so arrived at the airport more or less as planned, which was obviously a good thing. Another good thing in this multi-modal journey is the “Park N Fly” valet service where we simply dump the car at the PNF lot and have a bus whisk us off to the airport terminal. Sure, it’s not cheap, but well worth the relative ease of leaving your car somewhere.

Toronto Pearson airport went the way of London’s Heathrow and revamped their terminal waiting areas with bars and restaurants which will, with a phone-based app, deliver your food and drink requirements to the table you’ve chosen. There are two major issues with that, though. Firstly, most of the regular seating was removed to allow for the food outlet tables, and secondly the food and drink is scandalously expensive. It’s probably my advancing years that make me so curmudgeonly, but I won’t buy from these places on principle. On this trip we did locate some regular seating, and sat in comfort to enjoy the sandwiches we’d brought from home, which went some way to offset my grumbles about airport rip-off pricing.

** I tried to find a photo of the departures area, but couldn’t, at least not of the regular area around the gates. Anyone would think that the Airport wasn’t proud of it’s rip-off strategy.

Our flight was late leaving, but there’s not a whole lot you can do about that. The gate staff kept us informed, although I never enjoy being chivvied into boarding the aircraft quickly when I’ve been sat in the terminal for hours. Maybe airlines should allow a longer turnaround time?

We’d been messed about by the airline, British Airways, on our reserved seat allocation. We had paid a staggeringly high fee to book specific seats, but they’d changed the aircraft type and had to reallocate the seats, meaning that we’d lost our two window seats. I know, a seat is a seat, but I don’t like to get gouged on a fee to reserve a seat, then not get said seat. I have lodged a claim with BA to get that reservation fee back, so we’ll see what transpires there.

The aircraft for the flight was an Airbus A350. Big, for sure, and by modern standards quiet and smooth, but the seating on the ‘plane was horrible. The designers of these things must have to work quite hard to make seats so uncomfortable. Their primary aim is to save weight, but the thinly-padded shells you sit on are not good for a six-hour flight, so goodness knows what they’re like for a longer flight. We were in World Traveller Plus, one up from Economy, so the seats recline quite a bit. But that reclination causes havoc when you have to get out of your seat for a call of nature, but the person in front is in maximum recline. There was a woman in the row behind us had to get a flight attendant to wake up her next-seat neighbour so she could get out. There were lots of vacant Economy seats in the cabin behind the Plus area, and she settled herself there instead of coming back to the supposedly better seats, just so she wouldn’t be trapped again.

I must have slept a little, but I couldn’t get myself into any comfortable position at all, so whether I slept or not, I didn’t feel at all rested.

I should make a comment about the food service, because I fell foul of BA’s love of curry-based menus on our last trip. There were three options this time, in the shape of meat, fish, or pasta. I didn’t fancy the fish because it was trout, which is way too fussy for an aircraft meal. I didn’t think the lamb would be up to much, so I opted for the pasta, although not before being pleasantly surprised that all three options were still available by the time the cart reached our seats. The pasta wasn’t bad, but I passed on the curry-based starter, and only had half of the cheesecake thing they dished up for desert. Coffee was served, but it was such a miniscule amount that I barely tasted it. Airlines, not just BA, seem to strive for fancy meals when simpler, plainer fare would surely be easier, cheaper and more appreciated by mugs like me.

Arriving in London. Heathrow’s Terminal 5 is about as good as you’re going to get in that airport. It’s busy, for sure but everything runs quite smoothly. The UK Border was a breeze, with a very pleasant young border person welcoming us to the UK, and the baggage reclaim was similarly easy, which certainly takes the edge off the sleepless hours in the air.

Some hours later, at our destination and feeling helplessly tired, decisions were hard to make and tempers were beginning to fray, which is why bed was so welcome. The time difference is an issue, but not that first night when sleep is all you crave, regardless of what the clock says.

Our first full day here, though, was a struggle. The time difference and the sleep deficit all combined to make everything fraught. We did at least do something spontaneous, but not before some ritual shouting at each other; we have an excitable but tired four-year-old with us as well, which really doesn’t aid our attempts at achieving Zen.

Our second full day had me wide awake at 5am, which is the other issue with travelling, at least for me, and why I’m sat here at seven-thirty in the morning having finished this blog entry. As I said, travelling doesn’t get any easier. For our next, grown-ups only trip, I think we will seriously have to look at the BA version of Business Class, with its pods and bed-like seats. I guess we should start saving.

It’s a New Year

07 Friday Feb 2025

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

I’ve not written anything for ages, so, as it’s well into the new year, I thought I should knuckle down. The trouble is that there’s so much “noise” out and about, what with Trump, Musk, et al. Still, life goes on and I can always look away from the awfulness unfolding around me.

Someone posted a photograph on Facebook of an old railway station at Alexandra Palace in North London (UK). It was built right into the main structure of the Palace, too, which caught my eye, not least because I didn’t know there had been a railway there. I have no great connection with Alexandra Palace beyond my living in North London myself for a few years, but I did travel past the place every day when I was commuting from Stevenage in Hertfordshire into London every day in the early 1980s.

Alexandra Palace isn’t a palace in the royal sense, but a palace of entertainment and sports. It’s known affectionately as “Ally Pally”, and because it sits atop a big hill, you can see it for miles around, even in the suburban jungle of North London. It was opened in 1873 and has gone through many iterations in its lifetime, most notably perhaps as the BBC’s first home for a regular television service, starting in 1936. Ally Pally is still functioning, too, as concert, exhibition, and community venue. Curiously, though, despite having seen it every day for years, and lived relatively close by, I’ve never been inside.

But I digress. The station was the terminal point for a broad loop of line coming out from the London to Edinburgh Eastern main line. It must have been quite a slog up the hill with a full load, because it’s some climb up to the Palace. The branch was opened in 1873, along with the venue, but closed in 1954. The track bed is still in use, only now as walking trail, known as the Parkland Walk (North), and still utilises some of the old railway infrastructure to traverse the now busy roads.

I write all of this as a way of both highlighting my total ignorance of the history of North London and it’s many esteemed buildings and infrastructure, and the fact that my trips past Ally Pally were now over forty years ago. Where on earth did the time go? Indeed, this realisation of time past manifested itself on a trip to the UK in 2023. We were on a train going from Hackney Downs into Liverpool Street and I was remarking to the good lady wife that the trains were somewhat improved compared to the ones I’d used on that route in, wait for it, 1981! I hadn’t even begun to consider the passage of time, beyond a decade or two, but four decades and counting? It was no wonder things had changed.

Anyway, enjoy the photographs of Ally Pally station, and check out the links below, while I go away and consider how time passes so darned quickly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Palace_railway_station_(1873%E2%80%931954)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Palace

England ’23 – What we did well…

28 Tuesday Nov 2023

Posted by in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

A couple of good choices helped us have a really good time in England this year.

First was choosing British Airways for the flights. They were cheaper than Air Canada and offered a better seat. They use the far superior Terminal 5 at Heathrow, which aided transit significantly. Oh, and they gave us a free, and un-requested, upgrade on our seats for the flight home. Well done BA!

Then it was choosing Sixt car rental. They’re physically located in Terminal 5, which is a massive plus, meaning no bus trips off site. Their price was all inclusive, no extras unless I asked for them. Yes, I was upsold a better car, which pushed the rental price up by quite a lot, but the car, an automatic Audi A3, was the mutt’s nuts, very comfortable and very easy on the juice.

Our next success was the choice of cottage in Yorkshire. It was an outstanding rental and suited us a couple perfectly. Being November, it was also very reasonably priced. I had my doubts about its location, but as it turned out we were ideally placed to do the city trips, Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, and keep the mileage to a minimum.

Booking public transit ahead of time was good. We’d ordered Tourist Oyster cards (pre-paid travel cards) for London, which was essential, but we also booked trips to Liverpool and to Birmingham on mainline trains, and the Heathrow Express in London, getting good deals along with the discount travelcard (£30 for a Two Together card, giving 33% off most train fares) that we’d also ordered ahead of time. We didn’t get to do the Liverpool trip by train, but because I’d booked online, the train company emailed the night before travel to say that trains had been cancelled, and offered a refund. That gave us time to rejig our plans, and I did get the fares back.

We’d kept looking to see if ITV’s Coronation Street Experience in Manchester would be available while we were in England, and just a week or two before we set off, they opened up a few days and we were able to book a couple of places on that. It was a seriously mad experience, but really worth doing.

The London accommodation was a good pick, too, although there is a lot of choice and I’m sure there were many other good places we could have chosen. We were wise to stay a little out of Central London and use the excellent and inexpensive transit systems to travel in each day, not just from a cost point of view. Travelling home on the bus at night was a joy to behold, to see the (other) city that never sleeps.

We did a fair bit of walking, in London at least, and while tiring, it was wonderful to see so much in such a small area. Public transit is OK, but Shanks’ Pony worked well for us on a couple of occasions.

I think England, and London particularly, is a great place to eat and drink. Yes, we searched out those foods that are familiar to us, but dropping into pubs for pints of beer, gins, and football, is a great way to spend a rainy afternoon. The vegan choices on pretty much all London menus kept SWMBO very happy indeed, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that we gorged ourselves the whole time.

If there was one negative thing, it was being in England in November. The weather we knew, but I’d clean forgotten just how early it gets dark there, being considerably closer to the North Pole than our little home in Canada (we live on the same latitude as Milan). In London it wasn’t so important as everything stays open late there anyway, but any outdoor activity has to be completed by 4pm at the latest. Still, you live and learn.

It’s a shame, but I don’t think we’ll be heading back to the UK for a while now, unless family matters arise. We need to start saving again!

I

England ’23 – The London Pad

28 Tuesday Nov 2023

Posted by in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

We’d booked a week in a London apartment, or more accurately a flat, though VRBO. It’s much the same as Airbnb, where people loan out a room, or a whole flat, when it isn’t just a rental property. I think VRBO’s claim is that you always have your own front door.

London is a big place, and there are literally thousands of homes to rent for a week here and week there, so where do you start? Obviously, the closer in to the centre of London then the more expensive they get, and the same applies to the A4/M4 corridor to the airport. But public transit in London is among the best in the world, it’s integrated, plentiful and it’s really quite inexpensive, so staying out a little way is actually quite a good idea.

When the good Mrs. Mayne suggested Hackney Downs as a location, I immediately thought that it would be an ideal base, especially as I’d commuted through that area, albeit many years ago now. Overground trains were available from two very close-by stations, and there are more buses than you can ever use, and yet this all came without central London prices, so a good base it proved to be.

The flat we ended up renting overlooked the large public park known as Hackney Downs, even though it was more accurately Lower Clapton. We had the entire the ground floor of a four or five storey terraced Victorian house. I say four or five floors because there was space in the roof, with large Dormer windows, so I don’t know how many flats the house had been divided into. Including the basement, up to five, but it may only have been three.

The main front door opened on to two more doors, one being the access to our flat, and the other to those above us. The hallway of the flat was long and narrow, and the two bedrooms came off it. On the left, and literally under the stairs (wake up Harry Potter!) was the world’s narrowest bathroom, although it did have a good sized shower, two sinks and toilet. Woe betide you if you wanted to turn around in there though!

That hallway then opened out into a broad, glass-ended room that looked over the garden, and a good sized kitchen to the rear of that. It was actually a fabulous room, marred only by there being far too much furniture, and what furniture there was being covered in all manner of interesting things, from candlesticks, to birds’ eggs, to pottery. The flat also came with a cat, a cat called Violet, who was very small but very noisy.

The slightly unusual thing about this flat was that it was genuinely someone else’s home, not a holiday rental. There was so much stuff everywhere, not strewn you about, you understand, but strategically, and probably artfully, placed. It made the flat seem terribly cluttered. Along with the eclectic furniture came the eclectic art, most of it created by the owner himself. Some of it was better than others, and some was a little on the homo-erotic side, although it wasn’t that causing the issue, it was simply the quantity of it. Goodness knows who cleans the place, and it was clean, but it must be so fiddly to do.

Mind you, apart from somewhere to hang clothes, we lacked for nothing. Never have I seen so many teaspoons and tea mugs in a single place, and there was all sorts of little things that you might (or might not) need, from curry powder to tea bags, lying around the place. We had no intention of cooking, but if we had we could have turned out quite a meal. On a slight tangent, the owner also left some visitor parking passes, which would have proved handy had we not taken the car back. But as I said before, there was no need of a car.

We had sole use of the garden, but it being November and very wet, we just looked at it from behind the glass. There was a kind of summer house at the bottom of the garden that could be used as a guest bedroom, and a toolshed with not only a washer and a dryer, but two trees growing through the roof. There was also an outside shower, a good ‘un, too, but the time of year wasn’t working for us.

The main bed in the flat was enormous and very comfortable. The room itself had a great view across the park, but for some reason I couldn’t fathom, people loved to stand outside on the sidewalk and talk. The first Sunday we were there, there was a person (I’ve chosen that word carefully), doing what looked like drug deals from the garden wall, and this was from about 7am until well into the morning. Then there were two people chatting at 2:45am, which was nice, six feet from the window. Hey ho, it was all good fun, though.

The thing was, though, that we didn’t spend a lot of time there. It was nice to walk in the park on the way to the bus stop or station, but visitors to London rarely want to stay holed up in Lower Clapton, regardless of the accommodation. Would we stay there again? Maybe, but as I said at the top, you really have a lot of choice, so perhaps we’d try somewhere else next time.

England ’23 – The Final Down Day

26 Sunday Nov 2023

Posted by in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Friday and a down day. A nice late start, too, which was much needed.

The plan, which was fully executed, was to take a bus ride up to Stamford Hill to have a look at a house that the good Mrs. Mayne had once visited (probably) because her auntie lived there in the 1960s. It’s lovely riding the bus, and thanks to the very real benefits of the London congestion charge, there are many buses out there, so you never have to wait long. They still come in packs, of course, but that’s just down to the traffic.

Stamford Hill is known for its Jewish community, and today being Friday there were many Jewish people on the streets in their traditional garb, all hurrying to get things done before their Sabbath Day, which starts at sundown. (I used the word Sabbath because I think the community we were visiting used a different Hebrew word to the usual Shabbat). The community there is pretty large, and clearly thriving, with most of the houses in the surrounding streets having visible Mezuzahs on their door posts. Kids were in the streets on their way home from school, and Hebrew (or Yiddish, I wouldn’t know which) seemed to be their conversational language. That’s just one more tongue we can add to the list of languages we’ve heard being spoken this week. That’s by no means a complaint, either, because the variety has been wonderful. Diversity is strength.

We found the house, and while we were stood looking at it, a man in a big BMW pulled up. He looked for all the world like the late entertainer, Mike Winters, and even spoke with a stage “Jewish” accent, but more than that he asked us if we were looking to sell our house because he could help if we were. He didn’t say “Oi vey”, but if he had I wouldn’t have been surprised.

Then we bussed ourselves back to Hackney Central station, using up pretty nearly all the credit on our Oyster cards in the process, and had a glorious fish and chip lunch in Suttons & Sons, in their tiny Dine In area. Sutton & Sons has a full vegan menu, so the missus was in seventh heaven.

Before walking back to the flat, we stopped into a small branch of the Co-op (pronounced Kwop if you’re a Devonian), and while there, a fellow was prevented from stealing a plastic bag full of booze by the quick-thinking staff. You sort of feel for people who need to steal, but this guy didn’t look particularly like he was homeless or anything. Still, you don’t know, do you? He got away, but without the booze, so I guess it ended as well as he could have expected, given that he could have been arrested had he been caught.

Back at the flat, we decompressed. For relaxation, I pulled the contents of the kitchen garbage bin out onto a piece of newspaper, looking for the Toronto Airport parking receipt that I thought I’d thrown away. Then I found it in my backpack. C’est la vie.

Now all we needed to do was to pack and hope that the car we booked to the airport for Saturday morning turned up.

England ’23 – Too Much Stuff

25 Saturday Nov 2023

Posted by in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

A late start for us this morning, but an interesting day unfolded before us.

Cards on the table here, we bought too much stuff. So much stuff that we had to buy another case to take it all home. We had contemplated bringing an empty case with us, in anticipation, but that has logistical issues as well. So, we found ourselves on the number 30 bus to Marble Arch, to buy a case in Marks and Spencer.

It may seem a bit odd to do a 50 minute bus ride to buy a case when there are lots of other places you can buy a case, but the M&S Flagship store had what we wanted, and a few other things, and well, we do like a bus ride through the hugely fascinating streets of Hackney and Islington.

I had forgotten just how big that M&S store at Marble Arch is. It’s on four floors and is pretty much an old fashioned department store, but it looked as M&S should, and it smelled like M&S should as well. We bought what we needed and decided to take it straight back to the flat, on the bus, as it’s not a great sightseeing look to be wheeling a suitcase around.

Or is it?

There are hordes of people in London wheeling flight-sized cases around. They can’t all be prepared for an unexpected stopover somewhere, so I’m speculating that these are the replacements for briefcases and big handbags. Sure, they can be wheeled, but even the flight-sized cases are pretty chunky. Still, I guess it’s fashionable. (Not my photo).

On our way to the bus stop, we paused on the corner of Gloucester Place and Portman Square to admire the big house that was once the residence of an ancestor of mine. Mary Anne (Polly) Mayne was born in South Africa in 1856. In 1880 she married Robert English, a man of private means, and moved to London. In the 1911 census, she’s shown as living in the big house I pictured below, with, get this, her family and 11 servants. It’s some pile. Robert died in 1914 and is buried, along with Polly, in London’s Brompton Cemetery. There’s a grave we intend to visit.

We took a lazy day back in Hackney (or is it Clapton?), did some laundry and then headed out to Waterloo to meet up with my brother and his wife who’d come up on the train from Hampshire.

We finally arrived back in Clapton (or is it Hackney?) at around 10pm, absolutely exhausted. It’s a tough gig this holiday lark.

England ’23 – Welcome to London

24 Friday Nov 2023

Posted by in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Our first full day in London was a late start for us. It was Remembrance Parade Day in Whitehall, so we watched it on the TV in the flat. I’m not really a flag-waver, or someone who makes a big deal about veterans and service, but I do like the annual ceremony that takes place here in London. Indeed, I try to watch the one in Ottawa, but that’s often during the week as it’s marked on September 11th rather than the following Sunday as it is in the UK.


Perhaps it’s time to say that I’m uncomfortable with the growing sentimentality around Remembrance Day and the wearing of poppies, so I devote a little time to think about those young lives lost in the many wars inflicted upon us, and to think of the families that lost their men (and women, of course), especially when war became industrialised. It has become more poignant for me as I discover more ancestors in my family tree who perished, particularly in the First World War.


Anyway, leaving later than planned, we caught a bus into the City of London. It stopped short of our intended target, St. Paul’s Cathedral, so we walked from the Barbican and London Wall. Walking was a good idea because we came across a number of things that we’d kind of earmarked to see. First it was the church of St. Botolph-without-Aldersgate, now the London City Presbyterian Church, and the wonderful Postman’s Park on what had been the church’s burial ground. We had been watching John Rogers’ fabulous London Walk videos on YouTube, and this was one of his stops on his Churches series.
There was a service just finishing inside the church, and the park was one of those green corners of calm that you find all over London, but this one is special because of an art installation, the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice. It’s a roofed bench with a series of painted enamel tiles on the wall that describe, well, acts of self-sacrifice. It’s by the artist G F Watts and was unveiled in 1900. The people mentioned on the tiles are not well known people, just ordinary folk doing ordinary jobs, but doing extraordinary things. This was a great way to start the day.

Then it was down to St. Paul’s (I never appreciated the size of the place), just to mooch around as it’s not open to tourists on a Sunday, and quite right, too. The Remembrance Day service had not long finished so the gardens were full of commemorative poppies, which were a nice splash of red on a dull day.

I should say that I’m not really a church enthusiast, or religious, but the City of London is defined by its churches. There were over 100 in the Square Mile prior to the Great Fire of 1666, but that number is much reduced these days. However, Sir Christoper Wren, and a few other architects, rebuilt many after the fire. A few have been lost to German bombing, and a few more through the need to expand the business heart of London, but there are still 59 churches in the City, and you can’t turn a corner without finding one. They are undeniably beautiful, standing or ruined, and make a brilliant contrast to the steel and glass of the modern structures that surround them.

We sat in Paternoster Square, on a very cold stone bench to eat our lunch, then rambled though the Square Mile to find a shop to buy some stuff. We passed more churches, The Bank of England, The Royal Exchange, The Mansion House, and quite a lot of other stuff we didn’t recognise. This was all in a ten minute walk. It’s fantastic history, crammed into a very small area.

The shop in which we were buying stuff was TK Maxx, and very popular it is, too. The Canadian equivalent would be Winners. The place had way too much stock on the shop floor, there were too many people in there and it was a zoo. Stuff bought, we left.

We had a plan to be on Westminster Bridge for four o’clock, so hot-footed it to Bank underground and the long and winding walk, underground, to the District Line, which is in fact Monument station. A quick look at the map confirmed that it would have been far quicker to walk to Monument in the first place. Hey-ho.

We made it to Westminster on time, but I was a bit taken aback at the sheer numbers of tourists thronging the place on a cold November afternoon. It was probably thanks to the Remembrance Day shenanigans. We FaceTimed the Grand-baby so he could hear Big Ben, about which he was more excited than a three-year-old should be.

Eventually we fell into a pub on Whitehall, although not before admiring the poppy wreaths at the Cenotaph, and pulling faces in front of the MoD Main Building. Beer and a wee was on the menu, but the footy was on the TV, so we parked ourselves in front of that for a couple of hours. All the pubs down there were heaving with men wearing medals, and they’d done well as most had been there since the morning. The music in the pub was unnecessarily loud, although I may only have felt that because I am now officially an old git. Not a pensioner yet, though, that’s next year.

England ’23 – Heading to That London

24 Friday Nov 2023

Posted by in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

My missus is good at logistics, so she did the packing, ready for us to head down the motorway to London first thing. We were more or less on time as we headed out of Holmfirth for the last time.

The car’s navigation system plotted a route for us, but I ignored her and made for the M1 on my favoured route, despite her ever-increasing anxiety as I deviated. It being Saturday, the motorway southbound was busy, but not with trucks, just (mostly) cars. It was slow around Sheffield, but never to the point of stopping, and apart from a natural break at the Watford Gap Services, we had a clear run to our lunch appointment in Northampton.

Rejoining the M1 at about three in the afternoon, the traffic still wasn’t too bad, and we got to the North Circular pretty much without stopping. Then it was London traffic, but you’d expect that.

We arrived in Lower Clapton/Hackney Downs at our rented flat just as the sun was disappearing, had a breather, dropped the bags off, then climbed back into the car to return it to the rental company at Heathrow.

My first mistake was deciding to allow the Navi to guide me. Before I knew what was happening on the dark and busy streets, I was heading south down Old Street and into the London Congestion Zone. I was really trying to avoid getting stiffed for another £15 to enter the zone, but I genuinely didn’t see the signs. The traffic was hideous, and we crawled along the edge of the Square Mile, up into Holborn (and past a lot of places I have worked), then I decided to go my way to airport rather than that decided by the lady in the Navi. A crawl up Southampton Row to Russell Square, then Tavistock Square, and we eventually emerged onto the Euston Road. My plan was to use the A40 up to Hanger Lane, not the most direct route for sure, then run down the North Circular to Chiswick to pick up the A4 and M4. My idea was that I could refuel the car at Chiswick, and that plan actually worked out. But we crawled all the way from Euston to Hangar Lane, bought petrol in Chiswick as planned, and joined the thousands of other slow moving vehicles on the M4. We did eventually get to Heathrow Terminal 5, and after a bit of searching, found the Sofitel and the Sixt car returns. It took us longer to cross London, around 35 miles, than it did to drive all the way down from Holmfirth, which was 188 miles. That’s driving in London for you.

I enjoyed the little Audi A3 we had, but after a fair few thousands of miles, I was happy to park her and get out onto public transport. We had tickets for the Heathrow Express train and were in London’s Paddington station very quickly. From there it was the Tube to Liverpool Street, an overground train to Hackney Downs, and a ten minute walk to get back to the flat. No driving. Wonderful.

As a postscript, I had the invoice from Sixt car rental and I’m happy to report no penalties. I was very happy to rent from them.

I’ll do a separate post about the quite unique place we’re staying in, but I will say that the bed is very, very comfortable.

England ’23 – A Note About Driving

24 Friday Nov 2023

Posted by in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Driving in England is certainly quite different than driving in Canada, or indeed North America. It’s not about driving on the left in the UK, although if you’ve never done it that could faze you, it’s more about the sheer quantity of cars and trucks on the roads, and how people drive in a way to keep things moving.

UK roads are rarely straight and rarely wide, so the new arrival to the country needs to think about the car they want to hire. Big cars are a disadvantage in so many ways, not least in petrol (gas) costs (gas is so much more expensive in the UK), the general width of the roads, and the parking. Oh, the parking!

The speed limit on the motorway is 70mph, unless signed otherwise. But trucks are limited to 60mph, as are any vehicles towing trailers, so that left driving lane gets pretty full. There are also many people who do not drive at the limit, keeping it somewhere between 55 and 70. That will sound odd to Canadian And US drivers, but the traffic everywhere is so heavy that it’s very often not safe to drive any faster. Lane discipline is fairly good, people don’t hog the right lane (of three), although slower drivers do get caught in the centre lane sometimes, but that’s down to the heavy traffic. To keep moving at a sensible speed, you have to be very aware of the big picture, know what’s ahead and what’s behind so that you can anticipate lane changes well ahead. But here’s the thing, everyone’s doing the same thing and most are going to be very co-operative. If you signal a lane change then others will move to allow you out, or adjust their speed. It really is driving with co-operation.

In the same vein, when someone passes you, they’ll pull back in front of you so closely that it looks dangerous. But, as I’ve found on this trip, they’re just doing the lane discipline thing and move on to build the gap between themselves and you as quickly as they can. There’s no slowing, or braking, they just get going.

The co-operative driving goes further on regular roads. People driving along will often slow slightly to allow someone else to join the traffic from a side road. There seems to be an understanding and the person in the side road pulls out and everyone just gets on their way, there’s little in the way of insisting on rights, it’s just being co-operative. The driver who lets someone join the traffic will be the driver in the side road next time, so everyone gets it. I’m talking generally, of course, because there are some idiots out there, but generally it all works quite well. I haven’t come across the “established right of way” during this trip. That’s where someone pulls out across the road and waits (to turn right, typically), essentially blocking the traffic in one lane. That’s allowed in the UK when the road is clear to start with and you’re considered to have established a right of way in so doing. I tried that in Canada once and I swear the buggers would have driven straight into me if they could have. Once again, this is an example of co-operative driving.

In a lot of the bigger cities, London particularly, the speed limit has been reduced to 20mph. That will sound crazy to North Americans, but on tight, congested roads it actually works. Slower speeds keep the traffic moving, and when someone does pull out across your lane, you have plenty of thinking and stopping time. Add to that the fact that the limits are quite rigidly enforced, with speed cameras everywhere, and you get people driving to the rules. It’s a breath of fresh air, I can tell you.

There are also lots of roundabouts and Give Way (Yield) intersections, which I think keep the traffic moving as well. Roundabouts are often very small and just painted on the road, but if you just yield to the traffic on the right, they’re easy to use. In Canada I get quite irritated at the need to keep stopping at Stop signs and stop lights, so Yields and roundabouts keep me happy.

On the negative side, though, the UK can be a tough place to drive. Narrow roads, steep hills and very heavy traffic all combine to make driving a real chore sometimes. Petrol costs are about 30% higher, and parking is almost always paid, and very often really difficult to find. Bus lanes are everywhere, and you really can’t use them in the car, unless you want a hefty fine. With the weight of traffic generally, congestion can be a serious problem, and journey times can often double because of it. For the visitor, if you’re staying in London or another big city, ditch the car and rely on public transit. It’s cheap and plentiful, and believe me, it’s a lot less stressful.