May 15, 2008
Pictures! (Excuse the dirty windshield in some of these.)
They drive on the wrong side of the road. Looks weird, doesn’t it? What’s weirder is that Mr F sits on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road.
Fuel prices are a bit crazy. That doesn’t look too bad but then you have to remember that a) it’s in pounds and b) it’s per liter.
Road sign for a roundabout. They’re not quite “look kids, Big Ben!” but some are a bit mentaler than others. The craziest roundabout ever is in Swindon. (Video here.) It’s five mini-roundabouts in a single huge roundabout. Mr F and I went through it (at night) laughing in hysterical panic. It was crazy.
If it’s a straight road, it’s a Roman road. I took these types of roads for granted in the beginning, as someone who has driven those endless roads in California (Foothill comes to mind). After awhile you begin to see how straightness has never governed the road builders in this country since Roman times.
This is rape. I mistook it for mustard when I first arrived here. It’s the local crop and it is grown for the oil it’s seeds produces. Rapeseed oil is in everything here and it took me some time to work out that rapeseed = canola.
Next up, a photo tour of Winchester proper.
Also, check out Quantum Tea’s blog post about the flip side of this, she’s a Brit living in America.
Today’s Blogs:
Tiennie Knits: It’s fitting that Tiennie be one of today’s blogs since this series of posts was her idea. Tiennie knits like the wind and has a penchant for knitting a bazillion of a single item in all colors of the rainbow.
Dogged: This is Ashley who takes awesome pictures and makes jaw-droppingly beautiful quilts. She knits too.
May 15, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Wow, that rape is crazybright. Is that flowers or just the colors of the leaves?
May 15, 2008 at 7:57 pm
The whole driving-on-the-other-side-of-the-road thing got taken to new levels for me when I was doing an archaeological dig in Ireland because one of the supervisors had driven his car over from France! He drove me into Dublin once and pretended to be a tourist to excuse his weird driving (although he may have just done it to make me laugh. I was having a bad day).
That’s so cool about the Roman roads. I remember those bright yellow fields. Do you live anywhere near those horses carved in the ground?
May 16, 2008 at 4:30 am
I feel bad complaining about gas prices (mine was $99 to fill yesterday) but I see you have much worse! I think I would be one of the ijits getting in accidents over there - wrong side of the road, that roundabout - crazy! I read somewhere that driving on the left side of the road stems from jousting days. Men, being that most were right handed, would hold the joust in their right hand/arm and charge each other from the left so driving on the left is a remnant of that.
Thanks so much for picking my blog! Yippee!