15Mar

Driving in the UK: A Survival Guide for Americans

• Saved in: Driving in the UK, England, Logistics, Personal Essay, Road Trips, Scotland, Travel, United Kingdom
• by Chris Orcutt
• with 45 Comments

In June 2013, Alexas and I decid­ed to use the earn­ings from my books to take anoth­er Big Trip. I say anoth­er Big Trip because in Sept. 2012 we used the first half of my earn­ings to spend two weeks in Paris and Nor­mandy.

For this sec­ond trip, we debat­ed between the UK, Italy, Paris again, and, briefly, Egypt. But there was nev­er real­ly any con­test: we both want­ed to see Lon­don and cas­tles and all things Jane Austen, and I want­ed to see Sher­lock Holmes loca­tions and the land of my ancestors—the Scot­tish High­lands.

So we decid­ed on a trip to the UK, and Alexas began cre­at­ing a bud­get and mak­ing inquiries.

Then, in July, we watched two motor­cy­cle-adven­ture trav­el pro­grams: Long Way Round and Long Way Down, star­ring Ewan McGre­gor of Star Wars fame and his friend, Charley Boor­man. Our orig­i­nal plan for the UK trip was to fly to Lon­don and take the train to all of the oth­er places we want­ed to go. But once I saw Ewan and Charley dri­ve all the way around the world, and in the sec­ond series from the north­ern tip of Scot­land to Cape Town, South Africa, I knew I want­ed to dri­ve the UK. I want­ed a taste of the adven­ture they had expe­ri­enced, albeit with plen­ty of nour­ish­ing pubs and com­fort­able beds along our route, and none of the tsetse flies.

Alexas had been inves­ti­gat­ing the cost of rail pass­es for us, but she quick­ly dis­cov­ered that not only are they not cheap, the trains would­n’t take us every­where we want­ed to go. Also, trav­el­ing by train would lock us into spe­cif­ic sched­ules, and while we planned on pre-book­ing our lodg­ings so we would be at cer­tain loca­tions on cer­tain dates, we want­ed the abil­i­ty to come and go when­ev­er we chose. And I’m glad we did that, because for sev­er­al legs of the jour­ney, we end­ed up doing a lot of our dri­ving in the very ear­ly morn­ing, when the traf­fic was light, allow­ing me to take my time at com­plex junc­tions and round­abouts. But I’ll get into the specifics of when and how we drove in a moment.

After a few days in Lon­don, we took the train south to Brighton, where we hired our car. Then, fol­low­ing a brief vis­it to the white cliffs at Bir­ling Gap (the south­east shore), we began our zigzag­ging jour­ney north to Scot­land.

 

Why I Wrote This

I wrote this because when I was prepar­ing for this adven­ture, I scoured the Inter­net for a good, clear, com­pre­hen­sive guide for Amer­i­cans to dri­ving in the UK . What I end­ed up find­ing were a ton of small web­sites, blog entries, videos and PDFs, all offer­ing dif­fer­ent advice—some of it con­tra­dic­to­ry. What you are about to read is the best, most com­plete guide to dri­ving in the UK for Amer­i­cans.

By the time we reached the Cotswolds in Eng­land (a night­mare to dri­ve, by the way; trust me, skip the damn place), I knew that when I got back, I want­ed to write some­thing that would be a true help to Amer­i­can travelers—a clear, thor­ough, well-writ­ten blog entry that pro­vid­ed trav­el­ers with every­thing I think they’ll need to know in order to have a suc­cess­ful road trip through the UK.

One final note before I dive into each top­ic: Don’t think that you need to cov­er all of one top­ic before you move on to the next one (e.g., doing all of your Dri­ving Prepa­ra­tion before your Route Plan­ning). Just because I wrote the top­ics in a cer­tain order does­n’t mean you need to learn them in that order. Ide­al­ly, you’ll be learn­ing a lit­tle bit of all of them simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

 

Get Organized

The orga­niz­ing sug­ges­tions I’m about to make should be in addi­tion to what­ev­er you’re doing to orga­nize the trip as a whole. In our case, Alexas cre­at­ed a binder, and just before we left she filled it with hard copies of all of our flight, car and hotel infor­ma­tion; the day-by-day dri­ving direc­tions; the GPS/SATNAV coor­di­nates; and oth­er infor­ma­tion. How­ev­er, what I’m talk­ing about here is orga­niz­ing your study and work­space. I rec­om­mend tak­ing the fol­low­ing steps:

1. Cre­ate two sep­a­rate book­mark fold­ers on your web brows­er: “Gen­er­al UK Trip Info” and “UK Dri­ving Info”—or use what­ev­er names make sense for you. The point here is that as you’re bop­ping along, study­ing the dri­ving aspect of your trip, you’re going to find web­sites and resources about attrac­tions, restau­rants, tips, etc.—and vice-versa—and you don’t want to clut­ter one sub­ject with the oth­er. Keep the dri­ving stuff in the Dri­ving fold­er, and the Gen­er­al Trip stuff in the oth­er fold­er.

2. You might want to cre­ate sub-fold­ers in the Dri­ving folder—“Videos,” “Round­abouts,” “Laws and Rules of the Road,” etc.—but this is up to you.

3. Make sure you have a Google account, or if you don’t have one, I sug­gest set­ting one up exclu­sive­ly for the trip (e.g., “JonesUKRoadTrip@gmail.com”) and have every­thing trav­el-relat­ed go to that account. Then, use that account for when you start work­ing with Google Maps and Street View (more on this lat­er).

4. Get a spi­ral note­book or a legal pad to use exclu­sive­ly with your dri­ving study and route prepa­ra­tion. As you’re watch­ing a video or read­ing an online arti­cle about dri­ving in the UK, take notes. It helps to rein­force what you’re learn­ing, and then you have the notes to refer to lat­er on. In my case, I end­ed up with about 20 pages of notes that I was able to read on the plane on our way to Lon­don, then on the train on our way to pick up the car hire (rental car).

5. Cre­ate a fold­er on your com­put­er desk­top that is exclu­sive­ly trip-relat­ed, and include dri­ving-relat­ed sub­fold­ers. Here’s a pic­ture of the fold­er on my Mac to give you a start­ing point:

6. If you have an iPad or oth­er tablet (or a good smart­phone with a decent-sized screen), you should real­ly con­sid­er bring­ing it—certainly in place of a lap­top. Use it to con­tain all of your dri­ving- and trip-relat­ed doc­u­ments.

 

Driving Preparation

Because I would be doing all of the dri­ving (and Alexas the nav­i­gat­ing), I set out to learn as much as I could about dri­ving in the UK before we got there. Instinc­tive­ly, I knew there was more to dri­ving in the UK than just stay­ing on the left, so I watched dozens of hours of UK dri­ving instruc­tion videos, took count­less UK dri­ver’s writ­ten exams, and stud­ied PDFs of road mark­ings, traf­fic sig­nals and sig­nage.

To save you time with your own UK dri­ving prepa­ra­tions, I’m giv­ing you a list of the videos, web­sites and PDF resources that proved to be the most use­ful once I got over there and start­ed dri­ving. These are items that I’m real­ly glad I under­stood ahead of time, because had I gone over there with­out know­ing them, the trip might have been a dis­as­ter.

Let’s start with the videos. I’m con­vinced that the videos are the num­ber one rea­son I was able to dri­ve suc­cess­ful­ly in the UK. By watch­ing so many of them, I became used to the car being on the left, so when I got over there and had to dri­ve on the left for real, it was as if I had already done it.

When you watch each video, obvi­ous­ly pay atten­tion to the main point (e.g., nego­ti­at­ing a busy round­about), but try also to famil­iar­ize your­self with the road signs, road mark­ings, pedes­tri­an cross­ings, and park­ing con­ven­tions dis­played in the video. I found that by doing this, I was­n’t dis­tract­ed by any of these things when I start­ed dri­ving over there.

• Dri­ving­Mag­ic (over 100 videos; excel­lent ones on round­abouts):

http://www.youtube.com/drivingmagiconline

• “Big Tom” Ingram (dozens of videos; great on round­abouts and gen­er­al dri­ving):

http://www.youtube.com/user/2010BIGTOM

• Dri­ver­Skills TV (only a few videos; nar­rat­ed by a for­mer UK police dri­ver; good in-car per­spec­tive):

http://www.youtube.com/user/DriverSkillsTV

• 2Pass.co.uk (many videos of vary­ing qual­i­ty; the ones on motor­way dri­ving at bot­tom are excel­lent):

http://www.2pass.co.uk/video.htm

 • UK Road Signs Video (most of the major UK road signs in a 5‑minute video):

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgfyXdwoYo0

Okay, so those are the major videos. Doubt­less you’ll stum­ble across oth­ers, but I want­ed to give you a start­ing point. Now for the web­sites and oth­er resources.

The most impor­tant web­site for dri­ving in the UK—as far as know­ing the rules and laws are concerned—is the High­way Code. I did­n’t read every word of it, but this page is a great ref­er­ence, espe­cial­ly if you have ques­tions con­cern­ing spe­cif­ic aspects of dri­ving in the UK. Here’s the link:

https://www.gov.uk/browse/driving/highway-code

For know­ing what all of the road signs and mark­ings mean, you need the UK dri­ving Bible: “Know Your Traf­fic Signs.” This is an essen­tial PDF for you to have. I loaded it onto my iPad before the trip and made sure that my nav­i­ga­tor had reviewed it thor­ough­ly before we left. Part of this PDF cov­ers signs that give direc­tions, which are cru­cial for your nav­i­ga­tor to under­stand.

“Know Your Traf­fic Signs” also con­tains a lot of infor­ma­tion about road mark­ings in the UK. In the UK, they use a wide vari­ety of marks on the road (dif­fer­ent col­ored paints and con­fig­u­ra­tions) to com­mu­ni­cate a lot of rules—about park­ing, pass­ing, “giv­ing way” (our “yield­ing”), and much more.

This next site is geared towards the UK learn­er dri­ver, but it con­tains a lot of infor­ma­tion that is UK dri­ving-spe­cif­ic (like nego­ti­at­ing round­abouts). It also has lots of videos and lit­tle ani­ma­tions to illus­trate points:

http://www.2pass.co.uk/roundabout.htm

Final­ly, once you’ve watched plen­ty of videos and you’ve reviewed the PDF and oth­er web­sites men­tioned above, you’ll want to test your knowl­edge. I took about two dozen of these online dri­ving exams before we left. Even if the actu­al dri­ving proved to be a chal­lenge, I at least went over there con­fi­dent that I knew the rules, laws, sig­nage, traf­fic sig­nals, etc. There are online UK “dri­ving the­o­ry” prac­tice tests every­where, but I found the fol­low­ing two web­sites to be the best:

The Offi­cial UK Gov­ern­ment Site

Free Mock The­o­ry Tests (over a dozen tests).

Final­ly, although you don’t have to become an expert in British car ter­mi­nol­o­gy, you should learn their names for the major parts of the car. You need to do this so, at the very least, you can be on the same page with the car hire (car rental) com­pa­ny and any petrol (gas) sta­tions you roll into. This handy PDF cov­ers a num­ber of car-relat­ed terms, as well as more gen­er­al road- and dri­ving-relat­ed terms.

Because I don’t like unpleas­ant sur­pris­es, I tend to over-pre­pare for new endeav­ors. For exam­ple, before our trip to Paris in 2012, I spent three months learn­ing a good deal of prac­ti­cal French. (And I’m proud to say that because of my study, in terms of day-to-day com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Parisians and get­ting around, I kicked ass over there.) This time around, I viewed dri­ving in the UK as anoth­er for­eign lan­guage and pre­pared sim­i­lar­ly.

This being said, you might not need to spend weeks prepar­ing as I did. How­ev­er, I strong­ly advise you to spend at least 12 hours (per­haps 6 two-hour ses­sions) review­ing as many of the above web­sites and videos as you can, and famil­iar­iz­ing your­self with a) how round­abouts work, b) UK road signs and mark­ings, and c) the UK road sys­tem and num­ber­ing scheme.

Last­ly on this sub­ject, here’s a brief “wiki” overview/checklist of many of the most impor­tant things you need to know about dri­ving in the UK:

http://www.wikihow.com/Drive-in-the-UK

 

Route Preparation

Route prepa­ra­tion is essen­tial for dri­ving in the UK, so in the weeks before your trip, you should plan to spend many hours on Google Maps.

Now, I know what some of you are say­ing: “I don’t need routes. I’ll just bring my GPS (or SATNAV, as the Brits call it), put in my des­ti­na­tion, and go.”

Let me tell you, if you go over there with­out planned routes, you will regret it. Here’s why:

1. Most roads in the UK have at least two names—a route num­ber (e.g., A27) and the old-fash­ioned, lega­cy name (e.g., “East­bourne Road”)—and your GPS will some­times use one, and some­times the oth­er.

2. Your GPS always wants to take you via the short­est route, which will often send you down nar­row lanes, and through crowd­ed res­i­den­tial streets. Sev­er­al times our GPS sent us down res­i­den­tial streets so nar­row, and so packed with parked cars, that we bare­ly made it out.

3. You want to know that should your GPS fail, or you lose it, or some oth­er prob­lem befalls you, you will be able to get from place to place.

To pre­pare my routes, I knew ahead of time each site that we would be vis­it­ing, and the hotels/inns where we would be stay­ing each night, so I used Google Maps to con­struct routes between these des­ti­na­tions. In some cas­es, I cre­at­ed sev­er­al routes between loca­tions, so in the event of traf­fic prob­lems, or if we decid­ed to skip a loca­tion, we would have a back­up route.

I tried at least half a dozen jour­ney plan­ners before com­mit­ting to one, and I have to say that Google Maps was the best. And, while over there, I dis­cov­ered that their direc­tions are high­ly accu­rate.

Some­thing else when it comes to route prepa­ra­tion:

Once you have your routes planned, it does­n’t hurt to spend a few hours vir­tu­al­ly dri­ving por­tions of those routes using Google Maps Street View. You do this by drop­ping the yel­low “Peg Man” onto the sec­tion of road or loca­tion that you want to see from the street. Rather than explain­ing how to use Street View, how­ev­er, I’ll sim­ply include this how-to video:

 

 

Obvi­ous­ly, to do a Street View of every seg­ment of your jour­ney around the UK (we logged over 1,500 miles) would take for­ev­er, so I don’t rec­om­mend doing that. (Also, if you were to vir­tu­al­ly-dri­ve the entire route, what would be the point of doing your road trip?) How­ev­er, I do strong­ly rec­om­mend using Street View to get an advance look at small sec­tions of your trip (espe­cial­ly crit­i­cal junc­tions and roundabouts)—a few miles here and there of each leg. Know­ing the “lay of the land” ahead of time is espe­cial­ly help­ful when it comes to know­ing how to get into car parks, find­ing the entrances of his­tor­i­cal sites, or avoid­ing routes that look (or you’ve read are) too dan­ger­ous. A final point about that: If you think a road looks nar­row on Street View, wait until you get there!

Here’s an exam­ple of the val­ue of know­ing the “lay of the land” from Street View: While I was plan­ning our routes, I did a Street View of a sec­tion of motor­way in South­ern Eng­land, where I was to exit onto anoth­er motor­way that head­ed north towards Win­ches­ter. Because I planned on reach­ing this point before dawn, I want­ed to iden­ti­fy ahead of time some land­marks that would tell me when I would be approach­ing this crit­i­cal junc­tion. And my plan­ning paid off beautifully—when I drove this sec­tion of motor­way a few weeks lat­er, I knew the cor­rect lane to get into, miles ahead of time, and we reached the Win­ches­ter Park & Ride half an hour ear­ly.

There’s one more thing that you should plan to do with Google Maps and Street View, and that’s locate the exact GPS coor­di­nates of the impor­tant places you’ll be dri­ving to, includ­ing your hotels, car parks, and his­tor­i­cal sites. The rea­son for this is sim­ple: It’s far eas­i­er to enter a few num­bers into your device than it is to try to find them man­u­al­ly, or under the “Points of Inter­est” menu. The direc­tions built into the devices are some­times out­dat­ed, too.

It took many hours to do (okay, per­haps I’m obses­sive), but I man­aged to put togeth­er a list of coor­di­nates for the top 50–75 loca­tions we would be going to (includ­ing every­thing from major his­tor­i­cal sites to cathe­drals to car parks to hotels to super­mar­kets), and we had both PDFs and hard copies of that list dur­ing the trip.

To save you time in look­ing up all of these sites your­self (at least a sol­id week’s work) , here’s a copy of the PDF I cre­at­ed. It includes coor­di­nates for pop­u­lar UK attrac­tions includ­ing Chatsworth, Stir­ling Cas­tle (incred­i­ble), Strat­ford Upon Avon, Stone­henge (skip it), and Hadri­an’s Wall, as well as hard-to-find Park & Ride facil­i­ties out­side of Win­ches­ter and Bath:

Select UK GPS/SATNAV Coor­di­nates — by Chris Orcutt

Once we were over there, I dis­cov­ered that the exact coor­di­nates were the most reli­able and accu­rate means of get­ting from one place to anoth­er. Our print­ed direc­tions had occa­sion­al hic­cups, and some­times our atlas failed us, but when it came down to it, if we had the exact coor­di­nates of a loca­tion, our GPS could get us there—every time.

For the next part of your route prepa­ra­tion, I rec­om­mend that you read this arti­cle about the most dan­ger­ous roads in the UK and mod­i­fy your routes accord­ing­ly. As a result of read­ing this arti­cle, and some oth­er research I did, I avoid­ed roads that I had orig­i­nal­ly planned on dri­ving, includ­ing the noto­ri­ous A537.

If you don’t read any­thing specif­i­cal­ly admon­i­to­ry about a sec­tion of road you’re plan­ning on dri­ving, but you’re study­ing your atlas and the sec­tion looks ques­tion­able, I sug­gest you do as I did and look for video on YouTube of a car dri­ving that route. In my case, I was con­cerned about the A82 along Loch Lomond. On the atlas, it looked curvy, but I thought that the loch-side vista would more than com­pen­sate for its ser­pen­tine qual­i­ty and any dan­ger there might be.

And then I watched a video—this video—and said out loud, “F‑ck this.” (The video has accom­pa­ny­ing music, but I sug­gest you turn it off; it’s ter­ri­ble and will dis­tract you from what’s important—just how sin­u­ous and sui­ci­dal­ly nar­row this road gets.)

 

 

Don’t wor­ry: Although nar­row­er (in some cas­es much nar­row­er) than our roads in the US, not all of the UK roads are sui­ci­dal like the Loch Lomond sec­tion of A82. As a gen­er­al rule, how­ev­er, the roads in Scot­land are nar­row­er and more sin­u­ous than the ones in Eng­land.

 

Car Hire (Renting Your Car)

While you’re doing your dri­ving prepa­ra­tion and route plan­ning, you’ll also need to line up your car hire. What­ev­er you do, don’t skimp on this step. Do your research—particularly when it comes to insur­ance (you want to be sure you’re cov­ered). These are the steps that Alexas and I fol­lowed, and the lessons we learned:

Book­ing the car. Alexas han­dled all of our book­ings for the trip, includ­ing the car hire, but here are some of her tips:

1. Use the var­i­ous trav­el price-com­par­i­son aggre­ga­tors (e.g., Orb­itz, Trav­e­loc­i­ty, Kayak, etc.) to get a sense of what the gen­er­al prices are, and who has the best prices.

2. Iden­ti­fy the com­pa­nies with the best prices, and then inves­ti­gate what those com­pa­nies’ prices would be if you were to book the car direct­ly through their for­eign web­sites (i.e., “www.xxxx.co.uk).

3. Unless there is a major dif­fer­ence between the price you found on the aggre­ga­tors and the one you found direct­ly on the com­pa­ny web­site, book direct­ly through the com­pa­ny web­site. Doing it this way gives you access to the con­tact infor­ma­tion for the spe­cif­ic branch where you’ll be pick­ing up your car.

Which com­pa­ny should I hire my car through? All of the major Amer­i­can-based car rental com­pa­nies are in force in Europe, but Europ­car seems to have the most loca­tions, and there­fore the most cars avail­able. We rent­ed through Nation­al, only to dis­cov­er once we got there that Alamo and Nation­al are Europ­car affil­i­ates in the UK. The bot­tom line is, we prob­a­bly should have rent­ed direct­ly through Europ­car to begin with, and most like­ly would have got­ten a bet­ter price by doing so.

Where should I pick up my car? Although the per-day prices can be sig­nif­i­cant­ly less if you pick up at an air­port, we strong­ly sug­gest that you avoid airports—especially if this will be your first time dri­ving in the UK. We took a train from Lon­don to Brighton and picked up our car at a branch on a qui­et street. (And I knew ahead of time that the street would be qui­et because I had used Google Street View to check it out.) Get­ting the car at a less busy loca­tion ensures that you will have at least a few min­utes to get acquaint­ed with the vehi­cle and to get used to dri­ving on the left.

What size car should I hire? This is a ques­tion of your com­fort lev­el with dri­ving on roads much nar­row­er than the ones you’re used to in the US, and it’s also a ques­tion of how long a trip you’re tak­ing, how many peo­ple will be in the car, and how much bag­gage you have. One thing is cer­tain: do not hire the small­est avail­able car. I don’t care that it’s dirt-cheap.

Our con­cept of “small” in the US is very dif­fer­ent from the UK or Euro­pean con­cept of “small.” If you get the small­est, most basic car, you are going to be unhap­py. Also, you will need some pow­er on the motor­ways and to get through round­abouts. Final­ly, if you’re going to be spend­ing any length of time in the car, as we did (11 days), you want to be com­fort­able.

In our case, although we booked a car that was on the small end of the spec­trum (a “com­pact,” which was third from the small­est, if I remem­ber cor­rect­ly), the branch in Brighton where we hired it was out of cars when we showed up. It was only when I slipped a 20-pound note into the man­ager’s hand that an “estate car” (our “sta­tion wag­on”) mirac­u­lous­ly became avail­able. (To the Alamo branch’s cred­it, I was giv­en the big­ger, more lux­u­ri­ous car at the same price as the com­pact I’d reserved.)

It’s about find­ing the right bal­ance between space inside the car, pow­er, fuel econ­o­my, and the size of the out­side of the car, and obvi­ous­ly there are trade­offs. In our case, the longer and slight­ly wider body made cer­tain maneu­vers tricky (e.g., dri­ving down nar­row vil­lage roads where lots of trucks were unload­ing), but over­all, I’m real­ly glad we had the larg­er vehi­cle. The car had con­sid­er­able pow­er for accel­er­at­ing onto the motor­ways, and it was roomy and almost lux­u­ri­ous inside. Although we sel­dom drove for more than three hours at a stretch, when we arrived at our des­ti­na­tion, we always felt relaxed, and over the 11 days of dri­ving, I did­n’t devel­op mus­cle knots or oth­er dis­com­forts, as often hap­pens to me dur­ing long road trips in my own car in the US. (Pho­to to the right: Me, say­ing in Amer­i­can fash­ion, “I got this.” How­ev­er, I had done my home­work and dri­ven for a day before let­ting my Amer­i­can swag­ger creep in. Pho­to by Alexas Orcutt.)

What type of trans­mis­sion should I book: man­u­al or auto­mat­ic? In my opin­ion, unless you are a NASCAR dri­ver, you should absolute­ly book an auto­mat­ic. I am a pret­ty damn good dri­ver, and although, in ret­ro­spect, I think I could have han­dled a man­u­al trans­mis­sion, I’m real­ly glad I went with the auto­mat­ic. Doing this takes anoth­er vari­able out of the equation—the shift­ing. And believe me, when you get to busy roundabouts—where you have to be able to accel­er­ate quick­ly into them—you’ll be glad, too. Get the auto­mat­ic! And make sure your car hire reser­va­tion is explic­it: auto­mat­ic trans­mis­sion. If you don’t spec­i­fy, you will be giv­en the default—a man­u­al or stan­dard trans­mis­sion.

What about insur­ance and oth­er details? This is where you have to decide what is best for your­self. In our case, we inves­ti­gat­ed the per-day charges for insur­ance first, and then we found out that because we had the Amer­i­can Express card, we could pay a one-time fee of about $25 that would cov­er every­thing car-relat­ed for the dura­tion of the trip. This saved us hun­dreds of dol­lars.

To get this cov­er­age, you have to call up Amer­i­can Express and talk to their trav­el ser­vices peo­ple, and you need to acti­vate it before each trip. Once you’ve acti­vat­ed it, they will send you a let­ter say­ing you are insured for your next trip. Make sure you bring a copy of this let­ter with you, in case you have to prove to the car hire com­pa­ny that you have insur­ance. Before we left, I read some­where that in some cas­es, if you decline all of their insur­ance cov­er­ages, they will insist on see­ing proof of cov­er­age. We were nev­er asked to fur­nish the let­ter, but we had it with us just the same.

This brings me to my next point: Whether you go with Amer­i­can Express’s insur­ance plan or anoth­er out­side com­pa­ny’s, in 99% of cas­es, in order for the cov­er­age to be valid, you MUST decline ALL of the car hire com­pa­ny’s insur­ance pack­ages. This is crit­i­cal! Again: If you’re using an out­side plan, you MUST DECLINE ALL of the car hire com­pa­ny’s insur­ance pack­ages. Your insur­ance provider can explain the details to you about this.

Now, if you don’t have an Amer­i­can Express card, you might con­sid­er get­ting one (seri­ous­ly, the car rental insur­ance plan alone makes it worth­while), or look into whether or not your own cred­it card com­pa­ny offers insur­ance on for­eign rentals. Many do, but one thing, though—with all of the com­pa­nies (includ­ing Amer­i­can Express), rentals in cer­tain coun­tries are NOT COVERED. In the case of AmEx, I believe they did­n’t cov­er rentals in Ire­land, Italy, Greece, and cer­tain East­ern Euro­pean coun­tries. Again, you need to talk to your spe­cif­ic com­pa­ny and get the details.

Fol­low­ing are a few PDFs that we found very help­ful when rent­ing the car:

Tips on Car Hire in Europe

Car Rental Insur­ance Check­list

Rental Car Safe­ty Check­list

 

What paper­work do I need to bring to the car hire loca­tion? Above all else, MAKE SURE you have the fol­low­ing with you: 1) your pass­ports, 2) your US dri­vers’ licens­es, 3) your Inter­na­tion­al Dri­ving Per­mit—one for each dri­ver, and 4) your proof of out­side (“third-par­ty”) insurance—if you decide to go that route. Chances are, you’ll nev­er need your Inter­na­tion­al Dri­ving Per­mit, but get it. Bet­ter safe than sor­ry.

Final­ly, what should I do when I pick up the car? First, don’t let them rush you. Take all the time you need to learn how the car works. (You might slip your rental agent a few quid to moti­vate him or her.) Espe­cial­ly make sure that you find out how to oper­ate the fol­low­ing: 1) the gas tank cov­er release, 2) the hand­brake, 3) the head­lights and fog lights, 4) the trip odometer/computer, 5) the hood or “bon­net” release, 6) the trunk or “boot” release, and 7) the wind­shield wipers. Ver­i­fy that there is a spare tire and jack kit in the boot. Check to see that there is ade­quate wind­shield wash­er flu­id in the reser­voir.

Next, take time-and-date-stamped pho­tos of the car (inside and out, and from all angles). Be sure to get close-ups on the tire rims, doors and both front and rear bumpers. Make sure that every sin­gle scratch, ding or oth­er mark on the car is not­ed on the rental agreement—no mat­ter how small.

Mean­while, your nav­i­ga­tor and/or co-dri­ver should go through a check­list of every­thing on the car, ver­i­fy­ing that every­thing works. Here I’ve attached two handy doc­u­ments I cre­at­ed for our trip: 1) a pick­up check­list that cov­ers every­thing on the car that I could think of; and 2) an info sheet, on which you should write data such as the car license plate num­ber, make and mod­el of the car, pick­up and return address­es, and emer­gency phone num­bers. (To cre­ate these your­self would take hours. You’re wel­come. :)

Hired Car Pick­up Check­list

Hired Car Info Sheet

My final thought on the car hire is that this is an extreme­ly impor­tant step, so be sure to spend some time on it, and dou­ble-check every­thing you do.

 

The Realities of Driving in the UK

So far, I’ve writ­ten 5,000 words about Dri­ving in the UK with­out talk­ing much about the actu­al dri­ving, but this is because you will learn more from the above-men­tioned videos than I could pos­si­bly com­mu­ni­cate in 50,000 words. What I am going to do, how­ev­er, is give you a few nuggets of wisdom—or what I learned from my own dri­ving expe­ri­ence over there—that will pre­pare you for what you’re like­ly to encounter, and reduce the num­ber of sur­pris­es.

In each case, I’ll give you the most impor­tant idea(s), with­out a lot of expla­na­tion. Some of these ideas will be pre­sent­ed as stream of consciousness—exactly as they occur to me—so they may be in incom­plete sen­tences. Just know that these laps­es are inten­tion­al. Any­way, each top­ic is under­lined, and a few sen­tences about that top­ic fol­lows it:

Round­abouts. With­out ques­tion, the use of round­abouts in the UK at inter­sec­tions (junctions)—as opposed to our end­less traf­fic lights and four-way stops—is the biggest dif­fer­ence between dri­ving there and in the US. It takes some get­ting used to—even more than the idea of dri­ving on the left, which, after a few hours behind the wheel, you’ll be com­fort­able with. (By the way, I sug­gest you put a Post-It note on the car dash­board as I did, a note that reads, “STAY LEFT. LOOK RIGHT.”) The most impor­tant idea with round­abouts, in my opin­ion, is this: Get into the cor­rect lane as soon as pos­si­ble, and if you have a choice of lanes for your exit off the round­about, choose the most out­side lane. A cou­ple of oth­er points here: 1) Your Google direc­tions, although high­ly accu­rate, will gloss over round­abouts, often say­ing, “Go through 3 round­abouts”; in oth­er words, not every round­about is men­tioned. Also, Google often does­n’t count cer­tain spokes or exits off a round­about, so when it says, “Take the 3rd exit off the round­about,” it’s some­times wrong. 2) In real­ly large, com­pli­cat­ed round­abouts (these often have traf­fic lights on them), as much as pos­si­ble fol­low the mark­ings on the road; pro­vid­ed you’re in the cor­rect lane, these will usu­al­ly “spi­ral” you out of the round­about nat­u­ral­ly.

Tailgating/Aggressive Dri­ving. Lis­ten, I’ve dri­ven in and around cities all over the US—Boston; New York; Philadel­phia; Wash­ing­ton, D.C.; Chica­go; Dal­las; San Francisco—and I thought I knew tail­gat­ing and aggres­sive dri­ving. Nope. But here’s the weird thing: Every Eng­lish per­son and Scot we had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk to—from Lon­don to Bath to New­cas­tle to Glas­gow to Inverness—every sin­gle man and woman was friend­ly and wel­com­ing to Alexas and me. How­ev­er, put them in a car…and, well, some­thing hap­pens to them. Many of the English—and espe­cial­ly the Scots—are obnox­ious tail­gaters and aggres­sive dri­vers. I mean the worst. It’s so per­va­sive, it’s as though it’s the UK nation­al pas­time. Pre­pare your­self for it, because it’s going to hap­pen, and you’ll be shocked every time it does. No mat­ter what hap­pens, dri­ve at a speed you’re com­fort­able with, and if a long line of cars devel­ops behind you, and there’s a “lay-by” or turn-out where you can safe­ly pull over, do so and let the traf­fic pass. When you get fed-up and angry about how every­one in the UK dri­ves this way (to vary­ing degrees), stop and relax for a while. Have cof­fee or lunch, or just get out of the car and breathe.

Lack of Turn-outs or “Lay-bys.” This can be frus­trat­ing because there are going to be many places where you’ll wish you could stop and get a pho­to, and many times when you want to get the hell off the road and let traf­fic pass, but lay-bys are rare. So, my advice to you is this: When you do come upon one, if you need to stop for any rea­son, stop and use it because there like­ly won’t be anoth­er one for some time.

Cyclists. They’re every­where over there (except the motor­ways, of course), so any time you go around a blind turn in the coun­try, be pre­pared to encounter them.

Car Parks and Park & Ride Facil­i­ties. Use them. Don’t try to park on the streets. The sig­nage can be com­pli­cat­ed and con­tra­dic­to­ry, and many vil­lages and towns have spe­cial park­ing pass­es that you have to buy and dis­play in your car in order to park on the street. And don’t try to dri­ve into the cities! Use Park & Ride facil­i­ties instead. They’re spa­cious, well-orga­nized, and have bus­es that run from the car park to the down­town area of what­ev­er city you want to vis­it. We did this with Win­ches­ter, Bath and Glas­gow, and are we glad we did!

Nar­row Roads. The nar­row­ness of the roads and lanes will shock you. The oth­er thing is, the width of the roads is very incon­sis­tent. You’ll be dri­ving along on a nice, wide stretch of road—say, through the Peak Dis­trict, or on your way to the Isle of Skye—and it will sud­den­ly nar­row, and you’ll have a rock wall inch­es from your car on the pas­sen­ger side (this hap­pened to us in the Lake Dis­trict), or you’ll come to a sign that warns of a nar­row bridge ahead (all over Scot­land). A good gen­er­al rule of thumb is some­thing that Her­a­cli­tus said: “Expect the unex­pect­ed.” When you are sud­den­ly put into a tight squeeze sit­u­a­tion, take a deep breath and ask your­self, “How would James Bond han­dle this?” That’s right—coolly, and with laser focus. Block out all dis­trac­tions and focus on keep­ing your side of the car (the dri­ver’s side) as close to the cen­ter line as pos­si­ble.

Incon­sis­tent Speed Zones. Not much to say here, except that you’ll be cruis­ing along on a sin­gle-car­riage­way at the UK nation­al speed lim­it of 60 mph, be told to slow to 40, and then—in less than a quarter-mile—be told to resume the nation­al lim­it. In the course of a few miles, you might be forced to change speeds ten times. It’s worse in some areas than in oth­ers, but it’s still mad­den­ing.

Speed Cam­eras. They’re all over, and as locals in the Lake Dis­trict told me in a pub, they’re for real. Mind the speed lim­its while you’re over there because if you get a tick­et, the car hire com­pa­ny will send it to you months lat­er. This did­n’t hap­pen to me, but I know oth­er Amer­i­cans to whom it hap­pened.

Cross­walks. When you are study­ing UK road signs and road mark­ings, make sure you under­stand the dif­fer­ences between the dif­fer­ent types of crossings—e.g., Zebra, Pel­i­can, Tou­can, Puf­fin, Pega­sus, etc.—and when you need to stop, and when you can roll through.

The “White Van Man.” Peo­ple in the UK refer to their deliv­ery-truck peo­ple (our UPS or FedEx) as “the white van man.” Of course the vans are in a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of col­ors (pre­dom­i­nant­ly white), but the point is that these guys are the most aggres­sive, dan­ger­ous dri­vers (next to the motor­cy­clists) in the UK. On the motor­ways, they swerve in and out of lanes, and on coun­try roads, they’ll pass you on blind turns—everything. Give them a wide berth.

Sin­gle-Track and “B” Roads. First, regard­ing sin­gle-track roads, avoid them as much as you can. Some peo­ple who have dri­ven in the UK will say that you have to dri­ve them to get a real feel for the charm of the UK, but to hell with that. In your trav­els, you will find your­self hav­ing to use a few sin­gle-track roads, and that will be enough. You don’t need to go out of your way to find sin­gle-track routes between loca­tions. We drove more than our share of them in Scot­land because of where my ances­tors’ cas­tles were locat­ed, which in one case required us to go quite a ways off the beat­en path. The bot­tom line is, if you find your­self on a sin­gle-track road, and anoth­er car is approach­ing from the oppo­site direc­tion, the eti­quette is this: Whichev­er of you has the near­est lay-by should pull over and let the per­son pass. And if you’re on a hill, the per­son com­ing uphill has the right of way. As for “B”-numbered roads, avoid them if you can, but when you have to dri­ve them, do so with cau­tion. The B‑roads are noto­ri­ous for being extreme­ly nar­row, twisty, etc., but the locals (because they know the road) still dri­ve 60 mph on them.

Your GPS/SATNAV Unit. Two things: 1) What­ev­er brand you buy or own, make sure you buy the card with the lat­est UK maps on it (or that it comes pre-loaded with the maps). 2) Shut off the voice on the thing. Let your nav­i­ga­tor read it and tell you what to do next. The voice is dis­tract­ing. Oh, and one oth­er thing: Your US cig­a­rette lighter plug for the GPS (or any oth­er US elec­tron­ic device) WILL fit into the UK car cig­a­rette lighters, and their cars all have the outlets—if not mul­ti­ple ones.

Motor­ways. If you’re tru­ly doing a long road trip through the UK, you will have plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties to dri­ve the coun­try roads, so use the motor­ways to dri­ve between regions. They’re fast (70 mph for cars) and effi­cient. Exits are very well-marked, with signs that show what the round­about at the end of the exit looks like, and they even have these “count­down” bars to tell you how many hun­dreds of yards you are from your exit. A few tips regard­ing motor­ways in gen­er­al: 1) Stay to the LEFT, and once you over­take (pass) a car using one of the two right-hand lanes, get back over to the LEFT imme­di­ate­ly. 2) Use their “ser­vices” (our rest areas); for the most part they’re well-designed and clean, and you can get your petrol and some cof­fee, and get back on the motor­way after­wards with­out any has­sles. Do NOT make a habit of get­ting off at an exit, think­ing you’ll find what you need; the “ser­vices”  are the places to do this stuff. 3) VERY impor­tant: In the US, traf­fic already on the high­way has to yield to incom­ing traf­fic; but in the UK, it’s the oppo­site: If you are try­ing to enter the motor­way, YOU have to yield, so make sure you use as much of the slip-road (on-ramp) as you can, use your direc­tion­als, and time your merge into traf­fic.

Best Dri­ving Times. If you can avoid it, do NOT dri­ve at rush hour—basically the same hours as in the US. For most of our trip, I timed the dri­ving so that we cov­ered a lot of ground before dawn (dri­ving between regions), then stopped for break­fast to wait out rush hour, then did our local dri­ving dur­ing the day. Best times: ear­ly morn­ings and late evenings.

Petrol Sta­tions and Eti­quette. First, the col­ors of the fuel noz­zle han­dles are dif­fer­ent in the UK: Plain petrol (our unlead­ed gaso­line) is dis­pensed from noz­zles with a green han­dle; diesel fuel comes from noz­zles with black han­dles. Next, unlike in the US, diesel fuel is wide­ly avail­able. In fact, every sin­gle sta­tion I went into had diesel. Final­ly, if there are oth­er vehi­cles in the sta­tion “fore­court,” pick a pump lane and stick with it. Dri­vers in the UK hate any­body who tries to form “one line,” tak­ing the first avail­able pump. And once you’ve filled, move your car the hell away and park it. Some­thing else UK dri­vers hate: peo­ple who leave their cars parked at the pump, then go inside the sta­tion for fif­teen min­utes. Obvi­ous­ly, if it’s 5:00 a.m. and the sta­tion is emp­ty, then it should­n’t be a prob­lem. Just use com­mon sense here.

Oth­er Tips: 1) Make sure you have an ample sup­ply of 1‑pound coins in the car, or on your per­son, at all times; you will need them for every­thing. 2) Ear­ly in your trip, go to a super­mar­ket and stock up on car snacks and bot­tled water; if you buy it ad hoc, you’ll end up spend­ing a lot more mon­ey. 3) If you’re tak­ing a long road trip and stay­ing in a lot of hotels or motels along the way, have a packing/unpacking rou­tine, and put your stuff in the same loca­tion every time so you don’t leave any­thing behind. 4) Trav­elodge and Pre­mier Inn are the two most ubiq­ui­tous hotel/motel chains through­out the UK. Trav­elodge is cheap­er, but Pre­mier Inn is—in most cas­es—way nicer. If the price dif­fer­ence is only a few pounds (say up to 10–15 pounds), go with Pre­mier Inn. We stayed in per­haps half a dozen of them dur­ing our 11 days of dri­ving, and every­thing about them was supe­ri­or. 5) Final­ly, the road atlas we used is the A–Z Great Britain Road Atlas (Super Scale), and it was excel­lent; how­ev­er, it was a bit large, so you might con­sid­er get­ting its small­er broth­er.

 

Conclusion

I have just writ­ten over 7,000 words on dri­ving in the UK for Amer­i­cans. I real­ize this might be overkill, but I want all of my fel­low Amer­i­cans to ben­e­fit from what I learned dur­ing our road trip through Eng­land and Scot­land. It was an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence, and I’m proud to have done it—and done it with panache.

You can do it, too, but make sure you do your home­work ahead of time. Watch the videos, take the prac­tice exams, read the rules and sig­nage. Don’t go over there with the typ­i­cal Amer­i­can atti­tude of “I got this” or “I’ll fig­ure it out,” because if you do that, your chances of fail­ing (and pos­si­bly hav­ing an acci­dent or worse) will be much high­er.

Print this blog entry to PDF and put it on your phone or tablet for the trip, and maybe reread it as a refresh­er dur­ing your plane jour­ney over there.

Final­ly, if you find what I’ve writ­ten here to be valu­able and help­ful, let oth­er trav­el­ers know about it. And since I wrote this and am offer­ing it to you for FREE (and have saved you dozens of hours of work), please con­sid­er buy­ing one of my books. They are very well writ­ten, as well as enter­tain­ing, and you now have the time to read them. :)

Thank you, and I wish you a safe and enjoy­able road trip through the UK.

—Chris Orcutt
—

Tagged: driving in England, driving in Scotland, driving in the UK, driving on the left, England, guide, motorways, roundabouts, Scotland, UK road trip

• Share on: Twitter
• Pinterest
• Facebook
• Google+