All Road Trips Must End

High Street, Totnes

Departing Fowey required another walk to fetch the car and another treacherous, slow passage through the obstacle course of a village. My nerves and my rental car’s side mirrors somehow intact, and with a day before our flight home, we decided to spend the morning visiting several beautiful villages along the Dart River in Devon. Dittisham was pretty but a bit sterile. Totnes on the other hand, was a complete shock. A large town with many old buildings, including many along its colorful riverfront, it was full of what might be called counter-culture types. There were buskers and panhandlers and lots of body art and neon hair. It reminded us very much of Asheville back in North Carolina.

With a night to spend before our flight, we dreaded yet another chain hotel at the airport and a dreary cheeseburger or fish and chips dinner. Instead, we looked at the map to find a small town east of us and within an hour of Heathrow. Our eyes fell to one: Hungerford. For the past thirty years we have lived on a street named Hungerford Place. Other than being familiar with the Hungerford Bridge in London, I had never given much thought to the origin of the name.

Barges line the banks of the River Dun in Hungerford

The town of Hungerford itself was not much to write about. There is an old train station and an attractive waterway lined with barges. The hotel we chose, the Pheasant Inn, just outside of town in horse country was a wonderful surprise. We managed to get the last room, on a Monday night, and a table at the packed restaurant for dinner, which was one of the best of our entire trip. Our room was large and well-furnished. It even had a bathroom on the same level! After a good night’s sleep, a shower and a wonderful breakfast, we made the easy drive to Heathrow and home.

A few other notes of interest. The people we met were without exception friendly, hospitable and helpful. It is no wonder to me why Britain is so popular with American tourists, and those from every other part of the world. We were surprised, however, at how few other Americans, or others, we encountered. Almost all the other guests we met in the hotels and restaurants we visited were Brits.

Driving in Britain is part relaxing and enjoyable and part dangerous and terrifying. Of course, we must adjust to driving on the “wrong” side, but that takes only a bit of concentration and a passenger who keeps yelling “keep left!” Drivers there are very considerate and law-abiding. The rules of the road are followed. The motorways are smooth and well-marked. Drivers are very disciplined to keep left except to pass. If only in our country! I was never once passed on the left.

The frightening part comes when you leave the main roads to visit the towns and villages and sights you came to see. Many of the roads are legit single-tracks, which means one may have to back up in order to find a place to allow another vehicle to pass. Others that are not true single-tracks are so narrow that each passing vehicle is a hair-raising experience. It takes some nerve and some confidence. I just finished driving more than 1300 miles on this trip and perhaps half of them were on roads the likes of which an American driver may never see.

One thing that exacerbates the driving problem for me is that I always specify an automatic transmission when I rent in countries with left-side driving. I can handle a manual, but that’s just one more thing to deal with and I want to be able to stay focused on the traffic. For some reason the only rental cars available as automatics seem to be full-sized luxury cars. On this trip ours was an E-class Mercedes like the one I drive at home, but here it felt as if I were driving a huge SUV, or perhaps a truck. One more thing you might be frightened by: each time I filled my car’s tank, the bill was more than $130!