UK Day 7 Move to Windermere – Five hours driving

Time flies by! One year is passed after we visited UK in 2011.

2011-7-5 Tuesday

The sunshine disappears today. The B& B owner tell us that it will be a rainy day. She says that we are so lucky to have sunshine in the past five days in Scotland. It is hardly to have so many wonderful sunny days here.

After packing our luggage and leave B&B, we soon reach Glencoe. The sky becomes dark and start to rain. Magnificent scenery becomes a little gloomy.

In Scotland, GPS is a convenient tool. One interesting finding is that when we are approaching to town area. We will pass a painted red box on the road. It shows speed limit on the red box. Whenever we pass it, GPS will lower speed limit to exactly the same.
Most of time, the speed limit in Scotland is seventy miles. We have two times of experiences to lower speed to zero. One time is when we see one car stops in front of us and prepare to turn right for scenery. The other time is when we try to pass a biker on the road. All the cars stop first and lower speed to pass over the biker.
We take A82 and head south. The real challenge today is five hours driving from fort William, Scotland to Windermere, England.

Normally, we enjoy music by USB most of time. When we rent the car by internet in advance, we know that there is no USB port in the car. We need to burn all our music to CDs for driving in UK. We download album of Katy Perry and some other music. When we come back Taiwan later and hear songs like "part of me” or “fireworks” etc. They well remind us the time of staying in UK.

After driving for a while, the challenge we face is that GPS tell us to take third route from 5 roundabouts. When we are counting and checking the right route to take, I hear a long sound of car horn coming from backside. From rearview mirror I find an old couple driving a car following us. We thus miss the right exit and decide to follow the circle driveway and try to take right route. The special thing is that the old couple’s car is still following us. We don’t know anything wrong here. We quickly take right route to go after we find it. The good news is that they stop to follow us.
When we reach Luss and Loch Lomand, we only make a short stop and quickly take a photo as it is still raining.

During the five hour driving, we are accompanied by blue skies and thunderstorm alternatively. It reminds me the beginning driving experience in US when I was a student. When I am driving with blue skies, it remind me the twelve hours driving experience from Iowa to New York and that trip we visit Niagara fall and Quebec etc. When I am driving with thunderstorms, it will remind me the trip of coming back Ames from Chicago. When I see lightings around the field, it will remind me the life in Ames.

The major difference of driving in US and UK is that we use maps in US and use GPS in UK. In US, we always get some maps from AAA before we start a trip. In UK, GPS is our sole guide.
After driving about 3 hours, GPS bring us to a country road. We do not know it is the right way or not. However, we have no map or other choice and it is still raining outside. We can only trust its suggestion even though we feel weird for the place it guides.

However, the goods things are we experience some unique country views here.

First edition 2012-7-7



Next notice: Let me complete my project and see if I have time to complete rest days or not.