The Driving: A serious challenge and will whip any lazy (brain dead) USA motorist into a focused attentive driver pretty darn quick. The country roads are ultra narrow. Add bicyclists, motorcyclists, farm tractors, pedestrians, equestrians to the mix and there is no chance for bad habits like fumbling with the CD changer or blabbing on the cellular.

The Laws: Roadway Signage is excellent — until you get to a traffic circle round-a-bout that is; then all bets are off. Stop Light Signals, when RED, change next to YELLOW and then GREEN drag race staging style. Lane discipline on the motorways is something to see. No left lane, er uh, right-lane bandits ever.

The Cars: 80% are subcompact Vauxhall, Peugeot, Fords, Citroen all silly looking and fugly. Some of these towing caravans(!). Surprised at how many MINIs there are. They blend in (fit) really well. If I change my residence, then I would have one of those. Trucks have safety side bumpers to prevent small cars from wedging underneath. “Well Driven? +44 0555-1212”. A scarcity of American cars. Only saw a half dozen or so and most of them were the Chrysler minivan. Spotted 1 Corvette and 1 Ford Lightning PU. The medium|high priced car in the UK is, in order of popularity, Audi (by far), BMW, Mercedes. Our “hire car” was a Land Rover Freelander 2 which was either a curse or a blessing. Thankful for the extra room / comfort but we were now the biggest and widest thing (the British relative equivalent to a Ford Excursion) on those aforementioned skinny country lanes.

Navigation: Thank gawd for the in-dash NAV system. Off the beaten path exploration would have been a PITA impossible without it. The Brits use miles and MPH (?!)