Almost a month in the UK, and while family dominated, we did get around a bit. Here are a few observations on the trip.
England is a busy place. We arrived on the Friday that the school's half-term holiday started, and the M25, London's orbital motorway, was jammed solid at noon. Fortunately my local knowledge allowed us to take the scenic route to our accommodation in Oxfordshire. I was then forcibly reacquainted with the narrowness of the roads, the ones with no shoulder, but with hedges, trees and assorted greenery growing right up to the road's edge. Add the readjustment required to drive a stick-shift car again after a long lay off, and it was a challenging trip. A tip for would be visitors to the UK from Canada; make sure you get a small rental car. You'll find out why soon enough.
We were staying in the central England area known as the Cotswolds. Pretty, charming and very, very monied. The clear choice of cars for the people now living there is the Range Rover or the Land Rover. Wealthy Londoners out in the country, imagining that they really do need a four-wheel-drive monster just because they have to drive past fields on the asphalted roads. Goodness how those Chelsea tractors came unstuck on the single-track roads that link some of the villages. There is an almost constant traffic jam in the pretty town of Burford, and it's not an exaggeration to to say that 25% of the cars in the line ups were of the Rover SUV type. Numpties.
Never, ever, visit Bourton-on-the-Water on a bank holiday.
English grocery stores are a trial. They're small but have twice as many people in them as those at home. The people shopping in them all know what they want and rush around, and that makes browsing in an unfamiliar shop all the more difficult. Most of the big stores operate loyalty cards, and offer lower prices to the holders of such cards. Sadly, people not resident in the UK can't have a card, so we were reduced to asking other people at the checkout if we could borrow theirs. It's all to the good because they get the points, while we get the discount, but it's still a pain having to ask. We half cracked it by getting my nephew's girlfriend to send us a screenshot of her card, but she only had the Sainsbury's Nectar Card and not the Tesco Clubcard - see, only half cracked it.
Parking anywhere other than big grocery stores and it costs an arm and leg to leave your car in a parking lot. £8 here, £7.50 there, it all mounts up. I reckon we paid out hundreds of GBP. To add insult to injury, I was accused of not paying at Charlbury Station, although my credit card says otherwise. The fine is £100, but I'm not paying it. I did have to pay the car rental company an admin charge of £40 for handling the paperwork, as agreed in the contract, but I'll try to get that back from the parking people as well. I haven't heard from the same parking company about overstaying on a paid parking ticket at Didcot Parkway train station. I'm not sure, but I may have underpaid, possibly because I misunderstood the instructions on the machine. If they get me for that then I'll pay. At least nearly all of the paid parking was done with a contactless card this time; nowhere forced a phone app on me.
I may have picked a speeding fine, too. Speed limits are strictly policed in the UK, and as I was coming out of Stow-on-the-Wold doing perhaps 35mph in the 30mph zone, when I noticed I was driving straight at a camera van. I slowed quickly and may not have triggered the camera at all, but you never know. I'd been particularly careful about not speeding, so if I do get a fine then I'll be royally pissed.
When you pay for gas in the UK, you nearly always have to go into the little shop, there being no "pay at the pump" option. The UK is no slouch when it comes to retail technology, it was years ahead of Canada with Chip and Pin, and contactless, but this gas pump thing was a mystery. Or was it? The little shops are actually convenience stores that sell everything from coffee, to newspapers, to bread, to lightbulbs. If you pay at the pump then you don't go into the shop and you don't get tempted by that discount bag of Wine Gums. Going into the shop to pay is clearly a ruse to get you to spend more money. Don't fall for it!
Talking of gas, when people in Canada say they are the most highly taxed nation in the world, they're wrong. Additional UK taxes make gas there about 70% more expensive than in Canada. Another reason to get a small rental car.
In the UK, people don't generally tip wait staff. Most Point of Sale terminals don't include a tipping facility, and most servers look quite surprised when you do offer them a tip. While a goodly proportion of establishments take only card payments these days, if you wish to tip, have a bit of cash handy. British wait staff, while surprised, will always be happy to accept any reward for good service. Some places will make a mandatory service charge for large parties, but they're rare.
This may be a well worn bit of advice, but in British pubs, whether you stand at the bar or sit at a table, you have to order your drinks at the bar and take them to wherever you're sitting or standing. No one will come to your table to take your order. Things are changing a bit, and there's a bit of crossover between restaurants and pubs. If you're in any doubt, order at the bar. People still like to queue in the UK, that is stand in line and wait for their turn. If you're at the bar, don't jump the queue, even if there isn't an obvious queue. There are only a few things worse than jumping a queue in Britain; no, scratch that, there is NOTHING worse than jumping a queue.
Public transport is pretty good in the UK, with trains and buses being fast, frequent and generally affordable. Big cities like London are bringing all their transport providers under a single authority and controlling prices and services, which makes for excellent fares. The UK's trains are good across the country, even with the alarming rise of cancelled trains, often with no notice. The fares are labyrinthine, but if you research and you travel outside of the morning and evening rush, then it's all quite reasonable. We were paying £19 for a day return from Didcot to London, which for an hour's trip on fast train is pretty good. If you're young or old, you can get special discount cards, as well. Kids under 5 travel free on trains, and in London kids under 12 travel free on all buses, trains and underground, which we took advantage of extensively.
There are a lot of cars in the UK, and on certain days and at certain times it can seem like they're all out on the roads at the same time. It takes very little to gum up the road system, and it can be something as simple as a some traffic lights not phased properly, as we found out in Weymouth on a Friday afternoon. It's a fairly small seaside town, but it was gridlocked, all because there were three sets of traffic lights quite close together, but their phasing was out of wack.
I was reminded once again that the drivers in England are usually a very cooperative bunch. They'll let you out onto a busy road, yield when they don't have to, and generally don't behave like entitled dicks. Because speed limits are enforced, you don't get tailgaters, not often anyway, trying to push slower cars onwards, and you don't hear too much grumbling when people are running at below the speed limit. Not everyone plays the game, of course, but driving in England, even with the heavier traffic, can be a far more pleasant experience than driving in Ontario.
...and that was it, that was Blighty 2025. I'm sure there's a lot more that I could write, but this post is far too long already. It must surely be time to revert to the Airstream Annals.
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