Jan and John Maggs Antiques

An Anglophile's Guide for Americans Traveling in The United Kingdom

Part 3: Driving in the UK

If you feel that driving a car is just for getting from one place to another, if the responsiveness of a good vehicle doesn't give you a pleasure similar to riding a horse (or a bicycle, for that matter), or if discovering the best way to get from where you are to where you'd like to be doesn't give you the same kind of enjoyment as preparing a great meal, solving a tricky puzzle, or scoring points in your favorite game, then this brief essay on driving in Britain may not interest you very much. It might even offend you.

You see, I love to drive. When I was a child in the 1940's, before television and before the advent of malls, some of life's greatest pleasures were family "rides". Whether we visited a nearby roadside stand for a post-dinner ice cream cone, drove to a nearby town to look at farmland, new buildings, or recent headline news, or packed for a day on the road, perhaps culminating in a visit with relatives or a day at the beach, the windows of our car extended our universes and gave each of us a vicarious vision of the world around us.

Today, our travels in England provide much of the same. Villages, farmland, industrial centers, antiques shops, fairs, and (oh, yes) pubs, are ours for the asking. Traveling by car in England is one of our greatest pleasures. It could be yours as well.

A well-worn page from our aging Collins atlas: the heart of the Cotswolds

Click the map to go to the next page.