the mr.&mrs.h guide: Adventures with Ruby...the little red Fiat

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Adventures with Ruby...the little red Fiat

It was love at first sight

I consider myself to be an excellent driver, and my long list of speeding tickets and fender benders only reveal the miserable state of other drivers worldwide. So when Mrs. H and I decided to take a road trip in the U.K., I was excited about driving. I'm not scared of a manual, and surely driving on the other side of the road is no problem.....and roundabouts don't even deserve mention - easy.

Well, picking up a car at Marble Arch in London wasn't exactly the best place to start our adventure. Let's just say it felt like I was a 13 year old who stole my parents car in the middle of New York City. And, that humongous roundabout - how do you know where to turn?

Once we missed the first turn, it was all over. Our directions to our friends house in Wimbledon were irrelevant, and without a navigation system, we were at the mercy of pedestrians. It didn't make me feel any better that every person we asked for directions said, "Wimbledon??? hmmm.... wow."

Three hours later, our seven mile journey to Wimbledon was over. But that was just the start - no time to rest. On to York we went. Driving to York was fine. It was the country roads that followed that were terrifying.

Apparently there are "track roads" in the U.K. that used to be country roads for horses. I'm really not sure how they've been updated other than throwing some asphalt on them. The little "Rubix Cube" (another pet name for Ruby) could hardly fit on the track roads, which looked more like golf cart paths, so I'm not sure how we survived the SUV's with horse trailers that flew passed us.

A slightly terrifying track road

I will say, though, that driving ended up being incredibly exciting and fun. We saw so many things from the road that we would have never seen otherwise. Stay tuned for some of our favorite places we visited with Ruby.