Many people desist from renting cars in Anglo-Saxon countries for fear of having problems with right-hand drive. Maybe because I first tried it in Australia, so with little traffic, but I don’t consider it a problem, quite the contrary. Once rather, if alone, it was a problem to get around without navigation systems, now it is easy!

I hadn’t gone to England since 1997. I was supposed to go there in the summer of 2020 but because of Covid, I had to postpone. I went there in both July 2022 and January 2024 for two very different experiences.

Both times I used both public transportation and rental cars. In the first case I did 18 days solo for a trip to England and Wales. The goal my granddaughter gave me was to get the autographs of Harry Potter, Hermione and the Queen.

The second time was a weekend when I went to visit a friend who lives there. The destinations were:

• Cardiff
• Bristol
• Bath
• Salisbury
• Stonehenge
• Cornwall
• Dartmoor
• Exmoor
• Jurassic Coast
• Oxford
• London (on both trips)
• Canterbury (on the second trip)
• Dover (on the second trip)
• Brighton (on the second trip)ù

At this link is the 18-day near-solo map.

Apart from London in the itinerary there was a whole area where I had never been and with some areas I had always coveted. But in London itself, going back there after a quarter of a century and this time at least partly with the company of someone who lives there, was very interesting.

Drinking Italian beer in a Welsh pub

I left on Thursday night and arrived in Cardiff mid-afternoon on Friday. I don’t mind these kinds of trips. For me, it feels like a vacation as soon as I step out the door: I take it all in, wrap up the final details, and start to settle in.

One of the most exciting aspects of my previous trips to the United Kingdom was the ease of finding excellent live music in pubs. Perhaps even there after a quarter of a century one finds live music only on weekends and in the larger cities, but certainly this time the one night of live rock, unfortunately happened to me only on the first day.

On Saturday, Cardiff was packed with a myriad of bachelor/bachelorette parties. In the beautiful pub on the first day there was no moving and in the others they wouldn’t even let me in. Even in one because I wasn’t dressed right! And to think that once upon a time only in Italy was such things taken care of.

Being in the capital most of the time, I cannot say that I have seen Wales, but I have an idea. Of the cute little downtown Cardiff, the castle is clearly the most interesting building; I also liked the modern part in Cardiff bay where I rented a bike to get to Penarth. I also took a train to see the beautiful Caerphilly castle, in whose village I came across a choir of elderly ladies obviously singing rock songs.

Going back to the pubs, for me who grew up with the myth and memory of those pubs, it was almost a shock to realize that they drink Italian beer there now, in fact, it’s really cool.

Problems with right-hand drive no….

To visit several small places as in my program, it is essential to be in possession of an automobile. I soon got used to both the right-hand drive and the automatic transmission. But just as soon a warning light came on, the one concerning the tires. Since the vehicle was new and had few miles on it, and since it was not mine, I became concerned since the issue was insistent, so to speak.

In England, but now also in Italy, there is no way to find mechanical service at gas stations. There are hellish self-service contraptions where, by paying with a credit card, you can measure and inflate tires. WHEREAS, when the manual was distributed I had gone to the bathroom and especially I have a certain historical difficulty with tire inflation, at the first stop I had thought I had solved the problem.

But after a few miles the same warning light came on again. I referred myself for the same procedure, although this time it seemed they were already inflated enough. I asked a kind motorist for help: the warning light went out.

After a while, here we go again; when you’re not too sure of your ability in something, I think it’s inevitable to think that you’ve done something wrong, and in this case I thought that in addition to being clumsy I was also clumsy the guy who helped me; I stopped and got someone else to help me again.

…But with the rental car, yes!

The next day it flared up again; a new friend (the British, by the way, are very kind) claimed that the tires were overinflated so we deflated them a bit.

A few more miles and I had to stop at yet another super-crowded (summer we) rest area, at my huffing in front of the usual machine 2 guys who seemed super capable came forward and claimed the tires were fine and started searching the net for a solution to the problem (there was no instruction booklet in the car) of the on-board computer that can go haywire: thank you, thank you.

I don’t even need to tell you that after a while, that darn warning light came on again. Why hadn’t I called the rental agency yet? I was convinced it couldn’t be anything really serious and that they’d tell me to take the car who-knows-where or to wait half a day for some technician—or, worse, a tow truck—thereby ruining the whole trip.

In the meantime, going slowly I had arrived in Cornwall, where I discovered that there was a rental agency of my company on the opposite side of the peninsula, about thirty miles away. I assessed that by going there directly I could resolve the matter more easily and that at most they could give me another vehicle.

I explained everything to the girl in reception: Ah but how, didn’t my colleagues in Bristol tell you that this model has this factory defect and that it’s nothing!

If you have read some of the other stories you should know that I have had a chance to learn to be scurrilous in English, I have held back only because one of my many weaknesses is the gentle blondes.

However, I’ll have the foreman take a look at it now.

In 7 minutes on the clock everything was solved, I went to celebrate by having lunch with a set of panny treats taken from a shopping mall.

Until the end of the world (English), always right-hand drive

Before delving into the peninsula I had wanted to visit all my life, the setting area for so many novels I have read, I stopped in Wells, pretty, inspired by the name, and especially in Glastonbury presented to me as the city of witches and which I would instead rechristen as the city of little stores for yippies and nostalgic 68ers.

The Cornish coast is a succession of bays and inlets with breathtaking ocean scenery; all within easy walking distance. The place I liked best is Land ‘s end where the ancients believed the mainland ended and the westernmost point in England.

Saint Michael’ s Mount, equivalent to the more famous French one and also built by Benedictine monks was not reachable, but even from a distance it makes a good impression, indeed. Also wonderful is Kynance Cove, too bad the little bars close very early, like mid-afternoon, the Romagna lifeguards would organize differently. Another gem is the former smugglers’ hideaway of Polperro; I would have gone there for the name alone but as I was having yet another fish and chips in a pub complete with Beatles records playing in the background, I was expecting Jack Sparrow to walk in at any moment.

Next stop Meet people on the road and remains of prehistoric animals

My first time in the UK

And the time I went there to work.

Trips taken, travel stories divided by continent

Countries visited in my travel stories

Anecdotes, divided by type in travel narratives