Hit the road, Jack(ass)

We're now back in London after an extremely LOOOONNNG day of driving. But I'll get to that. First things first.

Yesterday morning we awoke in our b&b in Glastonbury and had one of the best breakfasts we've had in the UK. We then went up the Tor, which Pet will blog about. After that, we visited the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, which were quite interesting, despite the fact that the ambience was marred by people setting up PA equipment and some old British biddies having a picnic next to the Abbey entrance. I tell you, the Brits are mad about their damn picnics. There's tv shows about them and supermarkets are full of picnic supplies and accessories. Nuts to picnics.

So after the abbey we hit the road again and drove down to the south coast of England to Portchester, where we stopped to check out Portchester castle. Portchester castle was built by the Romans around 2000 years ago. Once completed, the Roman in charge of building it declared himself emporer of Britain, thereby ticking off his chums back in Rome. This was a really interesting place - it had been a fortress, a prison and a royal residence. And, best of all, it was a British Heritage property so we got free entry!

We left there without incident and headed to Worthing, a seaside town where we spent the night. I believe Pet is blogging about this.

We left Worthing this morning with the intention of checking out a Roman villa on our way back to London (Hammersmith to be precise) to drop the car off. When we finally got to the villa the stinking rain set in. We sat in the car for about ten minutes before deciding it was a no go and driving off.

Then began the odyssey of getting back to Hammersmith. We eventually got onto a motorway which encircles London, with the intent of taking it to the south western side and then getting off and driving to Hammersmith. So we drove in the pouring rain, through bleak and foggy conditions, along this damn thing which didn't have any exits to where we needed to be! There was a massive traffic jam going the other way which lasted for several kilometres (not that they have those over here), so we definitely didn't want to get stuck in that. We ended up pulling off to a place called Crackle Lane or something like that that wasn't even listed in the index of the map. After speaking to some locals and finding out just how far afar we were, we then decided to backstreet our way to Hammersmith.

Thus began several hours of tense confusion, erratic lane changes and u-turns down one way streets. Yet no matter how insanely I drove, nothing can compare to the way many of the Brits seem to drive. It's like a sport for them. A sport like deer hunting or pigeon shooting.

Finally, four hours later, thanks to Pet's excellent navigation, my driving daring-do and a little bit of guesswork, we arrived back at the car hire place in Hammersmith.

Thank crap for that.