This weekend I have been down in London filming a wedding. A wedding that I had to drive to. From North Yorkshire. On a Friday.
Now I do a lot of driving, in fact at one point I’m pretty sure that I was spending more time in my car than my house, but why is Friday such an absolute nightmare day to drive on? I mean I appreciate that there are a certain number of city workers who have a second home for the weekdays and only return to their real house on a weekend, I accept that. I also understand that some people will have decided to get away for the weekend and may well be travelling on a Friday, that makes perfect sense. What I find harder to comprehend however is where the other 400,000,000,000 cars are coming from that seemingly don’t exist for the rest of the week and why whoever is sending them has limited them to an average top speed of 4mph.
Now generally I wouldn’t mind this too much, I am more than happy when traffic is slow to simply break up the journey a little more and stop for (surprisingly enough) a few extra cups of tea. But this brings me onto my second bone of contention: why are there barely any service stations on the A1 and who decided it was a good idea to hide those that do exist behind bridges so you can’t see them until you’ve just gone past them? Is this simply an evil ploy by McDonalds to taunt drivers who would normally turn their noses up at their services and in particular punish those who purchased large volumes of tea (other not-so-delicious beverages are available) from another establishment and are now suffering rather desperately for their crimes?
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Perhaps the most difficult driving challenge of the weekend though was not the monotonous motorways, the slow moving traffic, the lack of tea or ticking bladder time-bomb, nor was it even the bizarre system of driving that seemingly only exists in London or the stress of trying to find various random venues across the sprawling city on a tight schedule. It wasn’t even the difficulty of trying to park in the world’s tightest car parks or figure out just why the heck you’re being beeped at whilst you’re stopped at a red light. No, the thing I really couldn’t work out was why London is filled with roads that suddenly narrow to a width that always looks smaller than your shiny new car without warning even though there are still two lanes and why there are metal bollards either side to ensure that you definitely will destroy your car if you happen to get the width wrong. It’s particularly problematic when you realise the church you can just about see in the distance is behind three such narrow passages and you’re pretty sure your car is a few inches too wide. Are Boris and his team too busy counting their congestion charge income to investigate things like one-way priority chicanes? Or crazier still, the traffic light? Three desperate long distance sprints with arms full of expensive equipment later I’ve decided I’m definitely not a fan of London driving.
But despite my grumpy monday morning journey reflections I still love to travel and am fortunate enough to be visiting some amazing locations across the country this year for some exciting sounding weddings so I really have little cause to grumble. Of course many of these weddings do take place on a Saturday, which means travelling on a Friday… and returning on a Sunday…
Anyone know how much it costs to hire a helicopter?
