Honk, Honk! An American on London Roads

Tuesday I did it: I drove in London and beyond. I survived. I made mistakes, but none caused permanent harm. I photographed three churches, and they were all wonderful.

My adventure started earlier in the morning than I would have liked. I was taking a Zipcar, and the cost of reserving it from 7 to 7 was the same as taking it out for most of the day, so I just reserved it 7 to 7 even though I planned to use it 8 to 6. I wanted to drive toward Suffolk and Essex, so I picked a car as far east in London as I could, hoping to minimize my driving in London time. The car even had an auspicious name – Gilgamesh.

Unfortunately, at 6:30 a.m. I got a call: Gilgamesh was undrivable. No worries, though, they’d reserved another nearby car for me. A manual. Um, not OK. I learned to drive stick shift when I was sixteen, enough to not stall out as I drove the familiar country roads by my house. But sixteen was…well, two decades ago, and I’ve never owned a manual. I already was facing driving unfamiliar places, on roads marked with unfamiliar signs, in a country that drives on the left side of the road, in an unfamiliar car. I needed an automatic.

He found me one. Within walking distance of my house. On the NORTHWEST side of London. I would have to drive up Finchley Road to Brent Cross and around the North Circular (not the M25, the road that circles and defines the boundary of London, but the inner circle). Busy, busy roads. I also had to coordinate with my co-pilot, Ruth, who is a UK native with an interest in history but who (living in London as she does) does not have a driver’s license. Thanks to that snarl-up (figuring out where Ruth was meeting me would have been so much easier if we had both not just woken!) we were delayed getting on the road.

I find the Zipcar parking spot…I figure out how to unlock the Zipcar…I find the key…I start the car…I pull out of the parking space…and drive down the street on the wrong side. Oh well, minor side street, the car coming at me didn’t seem to care, and Ruth got me straightened out. Then I had to navigate Finchley Road (shudder). Made it north…got to Brent Cross…missed my exit. Arg! Find a side street, turn around. Every time I have to turn or merge I’m scared, I feel as if I don’t know where to look or when to go. The lights are different – they turn amber (they don’t say “yellow” here) before they turn green, to warn you to get ready to go. None of the lights are on lines over the street, but on posts on the edges of the road. Which is fine except that sometimes there are lanes beside you that, because of how they are merging or turning or whatever, might have a red light while you have a green – and I have to figure out, QUICKLY, whether the red light I see out of the corner of my eye applies to me. Even the straight stretches of road are a problem, because the driver’s seat is on the right side of the car, and my mental cues for how to center the vehicle in the lane aren’t working – I’m going too far to the left of my lane, and the lanes are narrower than anything I’m used to driving. I even drove up onto the curb (they spell it kerb!) once, and I accidentally folded back the passenger side rear view mirror twice, although those were on narrow village lanes.

So I’m driving too slowly, responding too slowly at turns, probably not staying well centered in my lane, and other drivers are letting me know. As they pull up behind me, or as they pass me, they honk. Ruth and I try to figure out what I’m doing wrong each time, but we aren’t always sure. Then I finally make it onto the motorway – the really big multi-lane highway – and there is much more honking. Before I can figure it out, a police car pulls up behind me, flashes lights at me, pulls alongside me, and waves at me. I nod OK, I see him – and assume he wants me to follow him off the road – but as I move over to exit, he zooms on down the road. I take the exit anyway, only to realize it is marked with a do not enter sign. At the bottom of the ramp I stop, look around my car and verify that nothing is wrong with it. I find that I’m beside some sort of police center with lots of vehicles; someone must be able to help me? I must have been doing something wrong, but what? Thankfully an officer pulls up and offers to help, assuming that I’m lost. As soon as I explain, he asks which lane I had been in, and it all becomes clear – I had been traveling in the lane that is reserved for “overtaking” (passing). Whew! I can solve THAT problem. Later I was thinking hard – how had I ended up in that lane? I think the “slip road” (entrance ramp) for the motorway must have dumped me into that “fast” lane, and since I didn’t know better I stayed there, not really wishing to change lanes or deal with merging. After all, every NC highway with which I’m familiar has me merge in on the right, into the “slow” lane.

After that, there was much less honking. Every time I got back into the car, though, I tended to pull out onto the right side of the road, until Ruth would correct me. Since we always stopped at tiny little streets not even marked with lines, this wasn’t ever an issue, just a reminder of how much driving is instinctual, and how much my “instincts” were leading me astray. Once I almost pulled out into oncoming traffic because I was turning right and looked to the left to see whether anyone was coming. I went through a ton of roundabouts, too – which are not totally foreign to me, but are still unfamiliar. Ruth did a LOT of coaching as I drove, and I asked a steady stream of questions. I’m usually a good driver, and with a little practice I think I’ll be OK driving here. Going to the churches certainly makes it worth the effort! Even though there was plenty of honking, I also found the drivers to be more polite than I expected – if I needed to change lanes or merge, I put my signal on and the driver behind me always let me in.

Driving through the small towns was another whole adventure, especially the parking. The first place I tried to go had a small church parking lot, and I pulled into it hoping for a space, without luck. Turning around to get back out was a nightmare! The space was so tiny and so tight, and the rented car had sensors both front and back to warn me when I was getting close to things. Ruth got out to direct, and it was almost like playing a tune with the car, setting off first the forward sensor tone and then the rear one as I inched back and forth and turned myself around. Thank GOODNESS the Zipcar was just a little VW Golf.

It doesn’t take long, once you get out of London, to be in the countryside. Narrow lanes, minimal signage, no places to stop for a toilet. Ruth was terribly amused by how awed I was to see thatched roofs on houses that are currently in use and updated with electricity. Thatched roofs! She drove me nearly crazy, though, pointed out Tudor buildings that we passed, because I couldn’t comfortably look away from the road to enjoy the sights. We saw a good number of them, exposed black beams sagging with age.

Due to the lateness of our departure and the extra driving necessitated by our west-side-of-London start, we only made it to three churches before the daylight faded. I had to refuel before parking, and although I knew EXACTLY where to find a petrol station on Finchley Road – I walk by it all the time – I missed it because it was behind a bus when I rounded the corner. Doubling back to get to it was a real nightmare, and I’m not completely sure that was a legal U-turn I did, but I had to do SOMETHING to get headed back south before the time ran out on my rental.

I guess my driving wasn’t too frightening, because Ruth says she’ll come with me next week when I drive down to Kent. Should be fun!