Drive…if you dare

A friend head­ed for Eng­land who heard about their speed cam­eras asks how many he’ll encounter. Answer: a lot. Even out in the coun­try, they’ll snap away at you.

Since 1974 I’ve logged 80,000 UK road miles, from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Islands from Jura in the Hebrides to Guernsey in the Chan­nel. For a long time it was a driver’s par­adise.  More recent­ly UK dri­ving turned from a joy to drudgery. Of course a lot has to do with the huge growth of cars on cramped roads. The mod­ern depre­da­tions of the State are a result rather than a cause. Head­ed into Dorch­ester one Sat­ur­day morn­ing, I had to resort to an Ord­nance Sur­vey map to get in and out using one-track roads—all the reg­u­lar arter­ies were packed and stuck.

Big Brother is watching

When I first vis­it­ed in 1974, I drove a hot Tri­umph Dolomite Sprint from the British Ley­land press pool, 800 miles from Cotswold sto­ry­book land to the Lake Dis­trict and Scot­land. On the way back I drove Carlisle to Lon­don, 300 miles, in four hours. It was like dying and going to heav­en. The same speed lim­its exist­ed, but fast cars went up to 90 on the motor­ways, lane dis­ci­pline was superb, and if you looked like you knew what you were doing the cop­pers usu­al­ly ignored you. If, how­ev­er, they got you for DUI, the roof fell in, and right­ly so.

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We diced on back­woods A- and B-roads, and on the wider ones we even passed on curves. “Why do you over­take on curves,” I asked a British friend. “Because we don’t have any­thing else,” he laughed. It’s a sim­ple tech­nique. The oncom­ing dri­ver and the passee polite­ly moved over to cre­ate a third lane, and nobody got ter­ri­bly excited.

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All this is gone in the hyper-reg­u­lat­ed age of the all-pow­er­ful State and the Me Gen­er­a­tion. In 2009 I drove a fast six-speed VW Pas­sat Diesel from Edin­burgh to Skye and back and those bloomin’ yel­low R2D2s were all over the place. (Some cam­eras are dum­mies, but no less intimidating.)

Possible exceptions today

The only roads you can still have fun on over there are one-lane coun­try tracks with “lay-bys” for pass­ing, where, when an oncom­ing car approach­es, you only argue about who has the hono(u)r of revers­ing. Hard Knott and Wrynose Pass­es in the Lake Dis­trict are still like that, though you need to be wary of sheep. Here’s a video from a motor­cy­cle.  In flat­ter ter­rain where you can see well ahead (see pho­to above), you can go like almighty clap­pers. No cam­eras. (I think!)

Adden­dum: click here for a slight­ly clear­er video, but who will watch this for 20 min­utes? That poor bloke had to fol­low a red van. I was nose-to-tail with an MGBGT dri­ven “with assur­ance” by a pro­fes­sion­al dri­ve. It was well that only sheep were com­ing the oth­er way.