Driving on the Other Side of the Road

by Gale Sears

I had the opportunity recently of traveling with five friends to England. Cheers! We rented two vehicles with steering wheels on the opposite side from those cars driven in Utah, or for that matter most cars of the world. My sister-in-law drove auto # 1 with her two friends as passengers, and I was the designated driver in auto # 2 with my two friends. We were on our way to the Cotswolds! We’d rented a 300 year old cottage with most of the expected necessities and oodles of charm. (I swear our private English garden came complete with pixies and Beatrix Potter bunnies). The Cotswolds is an enchanting area of England about 100 miles North West of London where one discovers lovely little villages with names like Bourton-on-the-Water and Stow-on-the-Wold.

We spread out the atlas, mapped our course, and away we went! Oops! First obstacle: finding our way out of the rental car lot. Second obstacle: remembering to look left and then right (or was it right and then left)? Third obstacle: DRIVING ON THE LEFT! Forth obstacle: not losing heart when negotiating Round Abouts! Somehow we found our way onto the freeway and headed—north? Yes, indeed. It was here we discovered another glitch. When you can’t see the sun because of cloud cover, and there are no mountains to serve as mighty unchanging compasses, one tends to lose one’s sense of direction. To be perfectly honest, I never knew which direction I was going. And, if truth be told, it was that way most of the time as we wound our way on the wonderful winding roads of the Cotswolds. Simply put—I got lost—a lot. It actually became a running joke to see how many times we stopped to ask for directions. Often we would stop in one little village just to ask the way to the next little village. On our grand excursion to Stonehenge, I think we calculated 22 stops. At one stop we asked a lovely elderly couple, Richard and Evelyn for directions—and one of us (we won’t say who) used their facilities. It was an emergency.

It actually was a lovely way to meet the charming, gracious, and very funny British people. I think they sort of got a kick out of us too. There are things to learn from driving on the other side of the road and getting lost—a lot. One learns patience, and humor, and the value of good friends who laugh their heads off and don’t make you feel like an idiot when you’re going south and you think you’re going north. We actually found some very interesting and beautiful places during our misadventures. Maybe that’s the best lesson of all. Enjoy the journey!