Out of the city

Today was so different from every other day that it's hard to make the jump. I had a pleasant walk in the morning, and then it was time to pack up and go. I drove us out of London without incident or even (somewhat disappointingly) near-incident and onto the motorway. It was a big driving day. We headed out west to see pretty country and some special gardens and cottages.

The first place we went was called Cothay Manor in Somerset. Driving in the country in England is very much like doing so in Ireland. There are basically 4 kinds of road- motorways, which are like freeways, A roads, B roads, and local roads. A roads are 2 lanes with a line and those little bumpy things in the middle. You can drive pretty normally on those as regular kind of highway speeds, 50-60 miles per hour. B roads are too narrow to have a line down the middle. They are usually wide enough for cars to pass each other in opposite directions, and there may even be faint signs that there used to be a line there, but it still feels ever so slightly like a game of chicken.

Local roads are catch as catch can. They can be almost as wide as B roads, but more often than not they're about the width of a driveway. So that means driving very slowly, especially near curves, honking you horn (hooting, as they call it here) and keeping an eye on where you can turn out to let another car pass. These are not frequent. Fortunately, I think we only needed to do that once all day.

Honestly, I'm impressed with myself in how well I was able to navigate all of this. The one good thing about the local roads is you don't have to worry about left versus right side. There's only down the middle. I'm not finding it too hard to deal with the left side thing so far. Sitting on the right side of the car is different enough that it reminds you, and I did do this for 10 days last year. What's harder for me still is to remember that the gear shift (it's an automatic, but I still need to know how to reverse) and rear view mirror are to my left. I tend to drift to the left on multilane roads, so I always have to watch that side view mirror to make sure I can see the lane lines.

When we finally got of the motorway, we put the car's navigation system on to guide us. As navigation systems do, it took us by the shortest possible route, which meant several miles on roads barely wider than the car.As we got close, we were wondering if the thing was even right, because we never saw a single sign. Eventually, it said we were 150 yards from the destination and we saw nothing, but sure enough, in 150 yards, there it was.

Charming is not an evocative enough word to describe this place. It's a 15th century house with a rambling set of gardens and ponds and streams. It was beautiful and peaceful. We wandered around some and then had lunch in their tearoom. The lunch was simple and good. Mine was goat cheese (or more properly goat's cheese) and a delicious chutney. This all could not have been more different than London. There were maybe 20 people there total.

From there, we headed to a place called Selworthy, to which the navigation system once again took us up the shortest but hairiest route. This was a driveway where nobody had trimmed the vegetation for years. We didn't see another car the whole way up (it was at the top of a hill) for reasons that later became clear. We got there and saw a nice church, but what we were looking for were pretty cottages with thatched roofs. There may be churches like that somewhere but not here. We pulled into the parking lot of the church, not seeing anything except for a good view and were about to leave, but the cursed navigation system showed a place to eat a short way down the road, so we went there, and sure enough, there were the cottages. So we parked the car and walked around. Ronnie took photos and I took a few too but mostly just marveled at the beauty of the pace.

We ended the day in a town called Minehead. It's right at the edge of an area called Exmoor.

More to follow. We're off for the Cotswolds!