What speed limit?
Our Great British Adventure
April 17, 2018We escaped the airport and set forth for Lyme Regis on the south coast of England. Our first issue was the speed limit. As in, it wasn't posted anywhere. We were on a motorway and cars were doing all sorts of speeds from 50 miles per hour to 80, so we couldn't figure it out from their behaviour. After looking in vain for signs, I used my shiny new phone connection to look it up: 70mph (112kph) on dual carriageways, 60 (96kph) on single lanes, and 30 (48kph) in villages with street lights. Any variance from these was actually sign posted, but not otherwise.
That's fine as far as it goes, but that "single lane" category includes country lanes barely wide enough for 2 vehicles and no visibility. And our GPS, calculating "fastest route", assumed we'd be suicidal enough to hurtle down such roads at 100kph and therefore nonchalantly sent us down them regularly. It was quite... aggravating... for Anthony, who is definitely not suicidal.
Anyway we started south on a motorway, blissfully ignorant of what was coming, stopping at a handy rest stop for some lunch. It was cool and overcast and an unexpected highlight was passing Stonehenge, which is right beside the motorway and fully visible to drivers! I don't know why I found that startling, but it was. There were signs to Windsor castle, Legoland, a hawk conservancy and more along the motorway, but we ignored them all, intent on getting to our destination.
About 20 miles out from our destination though, we were diverted off the motorway onto a tertiary road (no shoulders and high hedges running along the edge of the bitumen) and Anthony, not yet knowing where the corners of our vehicle were, started making his unhappiness known. Especially as the locals seemed to think hurtling around blind corners in the middle of the road was sensible driving. It was horribly tight and twisty and the GPS, one time trying to correct a wrong turn we'd made, sent us to a steep muddy track that we completely baulked at. Thankfully a friendly local gave us a simple, sensible route to get us back on track.
Eventually we got to a steep, cold and windy Lyme Regis. We unpacked our bags then drove down into the town (parking was terrible) to get a few basics and take a look around. The cold (11C before wind chill) didn't deter Anthony from a gelato, but we didn't hang around there long.
