Driving on the Left

My, it has been a while since the last blog! In the meantime, we have crossed the channel, from Roscoff, France, to Plymouth, England. (A fun experience, especially since we got a cabin for the 5-hour trip: got a shower, a nap, and just hung out, quiet and alone together.)

Our ferry, loading cars in Roscoff

Bye bye France!

We spent a few nights with some lovely people in a small village in a verdant English river valley. Took the train into Plymouth and toured the Plymouth Gin distillery (a high point of the trip so far!). Got out on the moors, and in Princetown visited the hotel where Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Hound of the Baskervilles, one of his Sherlock Holms stories. And, learned to drive on the left.

View from our window in Calstock

The collection so far, after the Plymouth tour

Calstock train station

The famous railroad bridge across the Tamar River Valley in Calstok

Me and Sherlock at the Visitors' Center in Princetown. Conan Doyle looks on...

Hey, wait… let’s revisit that last. It has been a major point of our trip so far.

When we picked up the rental car I was cautiously optimistic about driving. I’d driven in England before, back in the ‘70s (and that would be the 1970s, not MY 70s – I’m not there quite yet!). At that time I had a left-hand drive car, the kind used for driving on the right. like in most of the world. I drove off the ferry from France at dusk, towing a trailer with two Hobie Cats, plastic catamaran sail boats. (Long story, that.) I had some mild concerns, but I do not recall that the driving presented any particular problems.

Let’s flash forward to today…

One of the reasons we started these year-long travels was to move out of our comfort zone. To create opportunities that would challenge us, that would require a new way of looking at things. I’ve found a great French word that seems to cover it: dépayser, literally, to be removed from one’s country, which is to say, the comfort zone; to be thrust into an unfamiliar area.

And that’s been going really well. We are discovering new things, new outlooks, new ways of viewing the world. I’ve found my conversational French is quite good; I get compliments often. But there is more to a language than conversation. I still struggle to read newspaper articles and magazines; P.A. announcements can be hit or miss (well, in English, too!), and formulating questions to deal with specific subjects (transportation, banking) can be tough. It’s all very strange and new.
But now we are in England! They speak a language here very similar to our own! What a relief. Life will be so much easier.

Then I got in the rental car. The one with the right-hand drive. By the third time I got in I was opening the correct door (the one on the right). And I rationalized that driving wouldn’t be bad, so long as I remembered to turn left into the roundabouts. Yeah.

Things were going well, as we drove around Plymouth (just to be clear, that’s a city in the south of England; I think the car we were driving was Hyundai).  We were proceeding down a long slope, with a truck coming up hill in the other lane. Everything was fine. Except, I was on the left, and the truck was on the right. It was all so WRONG!

Forty years of training to keep to my side of the road, and now it’s all different. The rear view mirror is up and to the left, left turns are the easy ones and rights take more caution; and I’ve got to shift with my left hand. Oy vey!

So far I’ve done only one really bone-headed thing, when I pulled out from a small turn-out into the right lane. Boy, were those on-coming cars surprised! It’s made me feel humble, and very much more accepting of others driving’s anomalies. We all make mistakes…

There’s another challenge, too. In the small village where we  stayed (Calstock, on the edge of Cornwall) the roads are very narrow, often only one lane wide. With bushes. (A full-size American car would be rustling the brush on both sides!) And then, on the wider streets, it’s likely parked cars are obstructing half the lane on one side. The protocol is to proceed slowly, and if you meet another car, someone backs to a wide spot. Drivers here are used to it and are not to be in a hurry – just take it easy and don’t worry.

Main street into Calstock

Country lane in Calstock

All this freaks Paula out, as well. From her perspective, on the passenger (left) side of the car, serious contact with the rocks and branches on her side is imminent. Slow down, she intones. Move over, emphasized with little flicks of her hand.  Meanwhile, I feel those oncoming cars, on my side, are frightfully close.

But so far, every trip out in the car is a white-knuckle experience, although it IS getting better.

Are we out of the comfort zone yet? Me, I’m completely dépaysé!

Next up: further adventures in the Cotswolds