Driving on the Left

As I've mentioned before, I was the only driver during our three-week road trip throughout the UK. I enjoy driving and the most we drove in a day was four or five hours so it wasn't too exhausting. There were a few rather interesting moments.

One afternoon I attempted to turn off a main road into a parking lot and just as I started to turn, the vehicle stalled partway into the oncoming lane. A big semi-truck and trailer was headed toward me. I've driven a stick-shift for years and can't remember the last time I stalled so I was quite shocked as I madly tried to restart the car and move out of the way. There was enough space for the truck to move around me if the driver wasn't able to stop in time, but my eyes were probably as big as saucers and he managed to stop in time and let me move on. I felt like a complete idiot and my hands were shaking but I think my parents thought we were about to die.

Another fun moment was rounding a corner to discover an ambulance in my lane as it was overtaking oncoming traffic. I tried to slow down and move as close as I could to the outside edge of my lane and the ambulance swerved back into the proper lane just as it reached me. At least that one wasn't my fault.

The view from the back seat.
That's my trusty GPS buddy on the windshield.

Some roads were gently rolling, like the one above, and others were like rollercoasters with blind hills following one after another. Go to Scotland if you want to drive on some seriously fun roads!

We know a boy back home named Dale and he loves to study anything to do with roads and traffic signs. His mom asked us to collect photos of signs as we drove around the country and in the beginning it seemed like a rather odd thing to do, but we all became a bit obsessed with finding interesting signs, both on the roads and in towns.

One of my favourite signs.

It didn't take long before we'd approach an interesting sign and all three of us would start yelling, "Sign! Sign!" and whoever was sitting in the front seat would snap a photo. We ended up with numerous blurry photos of signs, but we also managed to capture a few interesting ones. Here's a selection to show you that I not only had to contend with the confusion of driving on the left, I also had to learn a whole new language of signs.

Slow whats? Lorries? Oh, they mean big trucks.

These crossed-out signs are used for many things, including crossed-out town names to indicate that you're leaving the town or crossed-out blank signs like the one above to indicate that the lower speed zone in town has now been cancelled (the challenge was memorizing the standard speed zones because they rarely post reminders).

The image looks more like sharks circling people standing on a log rather than water spraying on people on a dock.

For some reason I found this sign amusing:

"It is an offence to drink alcohol in public places in this area"

We spotted a sign in a town (we didn't have a camera available) to the effect of:
"If you are doing something and the police tell you not to do it then it's illegal and you have to stop."

Sometimes you have to get up really close to know if the image is a cow or a sheep.

So... the road narrows, there are other roads branching off of this one, and there's a low bridge ahead. Got it.

Black means "this lane has the right of way".
Red means "this lane must give way".
I also like how they always make the "give way" direction arrow smaller so it's extra-obvious. They have creative ways to calm traffic here (basically expand the sidewalk to the middle of the road so there's only one lane and traffic has to take turns) so these give-way guides are actually quite helpful.

They are wordy, but very polite.

Huh?

One of the best sign images ever.

Apparantly this road is full of hazards.
If I remember correctly, it was also single-track.
Fun times!

A narrow bridge where we had to give way and wait for a group of motorbikes to pass before we could venture over.

This sign just makes me laugh!
A place like that just begs to be visited, eh?

So, this means that you're currently on a two lane highway, I mean "motorway", and two more lanes are merging but one of those lanes is creating a third lane. I'm so used to the signs over here that I honestly can't remember what merge signs look like in Canada.

Based on the image I figured out what a "soft verge" is, but really, who says that in real life?

They aren't fans of subtlety over here.

Severe dip? Yeah, I'd call that a severe dip.
I love the exclamation mark signs.

I love the word "queue" - it's fun to say, it's fun to spell, it's just a fun word!

I guess some round-abouts are treacherous.

We found this sign on a ferry dock.
Read it a couple of times out loud. It's odd.

We were collecting pictures of signs for a boy named Dale so when we saw "Dale Road" we had to get a photo of the sign. I believe I had to go through the round-about four or five times, literally, and mom still didn't manage to capture a decent photo, but we did have a great laugh about it and we'll never forget that crazy sign!

I think a dual carriageway is what we call a two-lane highway back home. I actually can't really remember what we call it in Canada, but a dual carriageway is a divided highway with two lanes of traffic flowing in each direction with a meridian in the middle. What do we call those in Canada?

This final photo summarizes the passion that went into our pursuit of collecting three hundred and forty-seven photos of signs for a little boy named Dale. I believe we were in either Scotland or the Lake District when we first saw a sign saying "Badgers for 2 Miles". I was driving down a steep, narrow, winding road with no place to turn around for quite some time. Mom and dad asked me to turn around but there really wasn't anywhere to turn so I told them we'd just have to keep our eyes open for another sign. When we visited my dad's cousin, Ian, we told him about our sign hunt and he said, "That's probably the only one like that in the country - I've never seen a badger warning sign before." His job takes him on roads all over the place so that wasn't good news. Dad immediately turned to me and exclaimed, "See! I told you we should have turned around!" and I turned to Ian and said, "Thanks a lot."

A few days later I exclaimed, "Badger sign!" during a quiet afternoon and mom and dad started yelling, "Where? Where?" and I just laughed. So easy to get them riled up.

During the last couple of days of our road trip our patience was rewarded.

The holy grail of signs.