If you’re not too far off the beaten path, Scotland provides a wonderful public transportation system. However, for those harder to reach places, which are always the places I want to go to, hiring a car becomes the only logical option. We’re talking the United Kingdom where one drives on the left side of the road, and the driver’s seat is on the right side of the car. This is the exact reverse of driving in the United States, which may seem like an easy switch in theory, but demands a more elaborate thought process when put into application.
My son, daughter and I sailed to Scotland from Ireland by ferry and rode on to Ayr in a cozy coach. From there we took the train for Glasgow. It was all very relaxing, but a thread of edginess began to creep into my leisure as I knew I would sooner or later be driving. Unfortunately, it would be sooner.
I had hoped to hold off on the driving for a few days. But we had scheduled a train ride to the highlands to catch a tour the following day. Upon closer assessment, however, it turned out that the tour ended after the last train headed out of the highlands, and so, our urgency for a car was forced into reality the day after arriving in Glasgow
I did not sleep well the proceeding night. It wasn’t that I had not tried to prepare, for I had. From various modes of transportation, particularly taxis, I had carefully studied the roads and the driving, and as a result, had come to the sound conclusion that it was utterly impossible. Failing to sleep off thirty-three years of driving the right way, I arose in the morning with some reluctance. Luckily, we had most of the day before the awful deed would be mandatory and so we used that time tootling around Glasgow, immersing ourselves in the history and architecture.
Not entirely defeated, I had decided on an automatic, but as it turns out automatics are rare to begin with in that country and would cost, if any were available, about 300 pounds more a day. An automatic was not available, and neither were 300 extra pounds per day. We found the cheapest way to go would be to rent a manual from the Glasgow Airport.
The actual act of hiring the car, once we were there, was quite easy. The people were friendly and helpful and offered a variety of services to assist me. They offered advice and directions out of the airport complex. I took it. They offered a no deductible insurance choice for so many extra pounds per day. I took it. They offered to rent us GPS. I took it. If they had offered crash helmets and first aid kits, I would have taken them too.
The awful moment arrived. We walked through the parking lot to space 91 and found our new ride. It was a compact black two door. I never did learn the make and model, or if I did, it was ground out by the stress which was to come. I was, however, not concerned with the small size, as I had been educated to the fact that small cars are more suited for the narrow roads there. We were to drive from the airport directly to the highland town of Inverness, about a four-hour drive. We got in. I figured out the numerous controls and gadgets. Check. Driving from the right side of the car. Check. Shifting gears with the left hand. Check. It was now a matter of negotiating city streets and about fourteen roundabouts to find the highways north. Check. But first I had to figure out how to get out of the parking lot!
Josh, my son, was sitting next to me as co-pilot, navigator, advisor, and hazard alert specialist. My daughter, Amber, was sitting in back, as all back-seat drivers should. We also had a new friend in the car; Tom-Tom, who was our rented GPS system. I had never used a GPS before, and though Tom-Tom would normally keep us on the right roads in the country and occasionally send us down the wrong road in the city, I would become hooked on his smooth and confident voice. So, with Tom-Tom leading from the front, my son directing from the left, and my daughter shouting from the rear, we embarked.
Shifting gears with my left hand, surprisingly, was an easy obstacle to overcome. Everything else was not. Every action, every turn, every roundabout—even just moving down the road, must be consciously thought out in advance as well as when being carried out. There is no room for automatic pilot or complacency. This would result in a reversion to thirty-three years of driving in the U.S and put us into oncoming traffic. Josh, although he had not driven there, had lived there nearly a year and helped talk me through roundabouts and intersections.
I had heard Americans often knock off the left side mirrors when driving in that part of the world. I quickly found out why. Driving on the left with the steering on the right gives us Americans the superficial need to hug the left. I don’t know why this is except for an innate fear of traffic coming at you from the wrong side. It takes time, in fact, it took me all four days we had the car, to learn to hug the center and not veer back to the left.
We headed into the countryside due north. I calmed down a bit, knowing as long as I kept everything ass-backwards I would be just fine out in the rural areas. Every so often we would pass through a small village which would arouse my nervousness. Also, from time to time we would come across a roundabout in the middle of nowhere. Instead of an overpass, like in the United States, there is instead a roundabout where two major highways cross.
We were on route A-82 , which traverses the west side of the country up into the highlands. Route A-9, which goes right up the middle, would have been somewhat shorter, but the lady working the laundry store in Glasgow had warned me that A-9 was a terrible narrow road with lots of accidents caused by overpassing. So, we crept up the longer way through the wearing day and began stopping to explore here and there as we got into the highlands. We made stops at Loch Lomond, Loch Ness, and where the greenest mountain views demanded it. I became well acquainted with pulling off to the wrong side of the road (the left side) on a regular basis. We took pictures and trudged around in the fairy-tale like countryside. Darkness comes slowly in the highlands but come it did and we drove on; past the twinkling lights of Port William and eventually onto Inverness.
My fear and trepidation came back to me in full force as we entered town. Inverness was much larger than I had assumed, in fact, it holds a population of over sixty thousand souls and is considered the capital of the highlands. We went across the bridge which spans the River Ness and rolled into the city center. There had been some concert or show of some kind, as the streets were crowded with people at this late hour. This only heightened my dread of driving through Inverness, however, with Josh’s occasional reassurance and the soothing robotic voice of Tom-Tom mapping the way before me, I got us through town and to our place of lodging, which was about a mile or so the other side of town. Tremendous relief flooded through me as I parked the car. I had accomplished something enormous and though I was feeling extraordinary that night, this four-hour drive was but a tiny first step in our travels to come.
The next morning, we had to show up bright and early for the tour. We checked out of our inn, but I did not want to be bothered with driving into town, so I asked the good lady of the lodge if I could leave the car in the parking lot until we returned that late afternoon. It was no problem at all, in fact, everywhere we went in Ireland and Scotland the people were very friendly and exceptionally helpful in any way they could be. We took a taxi into town and found our tour bus.
Most of the tour was on the Isle of Skye and it was genuinely comforting to bounce along in the coach and not be concerned with negotiating the ridiculously narrow and steep roads of the Hebrides. It was a relaxing yet interesting day with stops at Loch Ness, Invermorrison, Eilean Donan Castle, and a host of other amazing places. But later in the day as the tour began to wind down and we headed back for Inverness, I began to feel edgy about the awful prospect of driving again.
Reluctantly, I climbed back into the driver’s seat. There was plenty of daylight left. It was July and that time of year it gets light about 4am and doesn’t get dark till about 11pm. We began our way back south. I was relying on Tom-Tom to take us back the way we came, but instead it put us on A-9, the dreaded road the laundry lady had steered me clear of. By the time I realized what road we were on none of us wanted to go back to Inverness to find the other road and so we decided to keep on the cursed way back. As it turned out Tom-Tom knew better than the sagacious laundry lady and we were surprised and heartened to find this a wide and straight road out of the highlands.
We made a stop in Stirling, the town in which Josh was living and studying at the University. He needed to run to his flat for something and I had my first experience of parallel parking. It was a rather tight fit, on a steep hill, with Josh yelling one thing as Amber hollered another. With much cursing and sweating I made it in. I stepped from the car to find William Wallace, in all his statutory might, glaring down on us from his elevated perch above the town center.
Getting out was no easier a feat than getting in had been. Once again, with some colorful metaphors aimed at absolutely nothing and a few more beads of sweat, I was free without a scrape or a ding or a dent. We were back on the hilly narrow roads to the nearest roundabout, which led us to a couple more roundabouts before getting on the road back to Glasgow. A few more wrong way roundabouts led us, at last, to the safety and sanctity of our hotel parking lot.
The next day we went to Edinburgh. I had rented us a flat there which would serve as home base as we ventured about in the rented car. I was a nervous wreck. The drive from the Clyde to the firth of forth is, very likely, the most traveled road in the northern United Kingdom, and yet, still not an unpleasant drive, even for dumb Americans. However, panic unfolded before me once again as we hastened into the skirts of Scotland’s capitol. Josh had informed me his girlfriend was arriving by train at Waverley Station in the middle of the city and there was no time to go looking for the flat until after we picked her up.
I had both read and been told that Edinburgh was tricky to get around in, but I had no clue; not even Tom-Tom was prepared for what happened next. As we headed into the city-center we began encountering a maze of one-way streets, confusing intersections, and of course, the ever-present roundabouts. Tom-Tom’s methodical words began oozing into the tense air more and more frequently;
“At next intersection—turn—right!” Enter next roundabout and—take—the second—exit!”
Josh, however, had his own way of finding Waverley Station. “Dad. Go left at the intersection. You have to get to that bridge over there!”
I tried listening to the both of them, which was a mistake because all I accomplished was pissing them both off. At some point Tom-Tom ordered me right, but there were so many side streets at this point that I could not be certain which one he meant. I turned, and it wasn’t until I had completed this turn that I found myself going the wrong way on a one way. I did a three-point turn in the middle of the road. It very well may have been a five-point turn. Another thing I learned about Tom-Tom once I was in Edinburgh was that he was not up to date on which streets were under construction or closed. This caused another couple of hasty five-point turnarounds. At some point in the ensuing chaos I ended up in a lane that didn’t seem quite right. A man in a car to our left was yelling at me. “Hey, that lane is for buses only. You’ll have to get out of there!”
I realized in my panic that it was near impossible to simply change lanes as the traffic was heavy. In addition to this, my foreign merging skills were not up to par. Somehow, I got back into a car lane and found our way to the bridge near Waverley Station where my son’s girlfriend, Katie, was supposed to be waiting. She was not. White knuckled and perspiring I got us somehow turned around and we crossed again. Still no girlfriend. “I’ll get out and find her,” my son announced, “just keep coming back to the bridge and we’ll find you!” I stopped the car just long enough for him to jump out, and then it was just Amber, myself and Tom-Tom to maneuver the confusing streets.
I got on the wrong road and Tom-Tom sought to remedy this by rerouting me around another way; “At—next intersection—turn—right!” I did this and found it dead ended at a construction site. I was in meltdown mode—the last few sparks of fortitude faded. I simply pulled the car to the side and turned it off. I was a sweating disaster of frayed nerves.
Amber and I began walking back in the general direction of the bridge. When we got there, we could not be certain if it was the right bridge. The bridges all seemed to look alike. We meandered over to a bus stop to study the maps posted there. As we fruitlessly attempted to figure out the route a voice boomed from behind us, “Hey there!” We turned to find my son and his girlfriend behind us. Introductions were made, and I apologized to the girl that she was meeting me in my most stressful moments of our trip. “Where’s the car?” Josh asked.
“I left it about a quarter mile away.”
“What? You just randomly abandoned the car?”
“Yes.”
Once on foot I am normally good about bearing and direction, but I had no clue how to get back to the car. Amber led the way back to the barricaded street which it was parked on and we all climbed in. I took a deep breath, steadied my hands and I got us turned around and back out into the city.
We called, as instructed, the number for the flat I had rented us to let them know we were on the way. Something had happened to the flat; a flooded laundry room or some such calamity, and we were sent to another flat in a different part of the city. We keyed in the new address and Tom-Tom got us there with only a couple of wrong turns. There was no car park nearby and I thus had the opportunity to practice my parallel parking once again. I succeeded and we climbed three stories to our new home.
Careful and tedious planning for the following day led to public transportation and walking around the capitol and to Edinburgh Castle. I never enjoyed my hired car so much as seeing it parked and useless. However, this joyful day of no driving would be the only one during my several days of possessing the car. There was another long drive in store for the next day.
We were off to the rolling greenery of the middle march; the borders to be more exact. Southern Scotland is a place where public transportation is unheard of, or at least laughed at. The good part of this was the fact that the landscape was speckled with a few small villages and very little traffic. The not so good part was the width of the roads.
Although this would turn out to be the most leisurely and enjoyable of our drives, one incident, or near incident, would stand out above all the other driving dilemmas encountered thus far. We were on a narrow road not far from the tiny town of Haywick. These roads, in most places, are bordered by green grasses, stone walls or sheep. The road narrows even more when crossing over one of the many stone humpback bridges. At one such bridge it was impossible to see any oncoming traffic, as it was at a curve in the road. As I advanced onto the bridge, the breadth of which seemed nearly consumed by the size of our compact, a van sped around the corner and onto the opposite side. I slowed and hugged the stone wall. The van merely kept speeding at me. I have been somewhat fair at estimating space and distance in my years, and I knew immediately this was not going to end well. During the three second span of the event, it was quite obvious that either the left mirror was going to get knocked off against the wall, the right mirror was going to get obliterated by the van, or there was going to be a collision much worse. As we and the van met at the center of the quaint bridge, I let out an awful groan of demise and cringed and tightened my body in anticipation of the accident. Everyone else in the car was laughing at me.
Then it happened. Nothing. And how that happened I’ll never know. At best there could not have been more than a quarter inch clearance on either side. It could have been extraordinary luck or my superior foreign driving skills that got us through, but we will never be certain. Josh, Amber and Katie continued laughing at me and we went about our merry way.
It was a phenomenal day. We toured Hermitage Castle and only a few miles beyond that, we met with our clan chief. The drive back at the end of the day was equally inspiring, mainly because once returning to Edinburgh I would be turning the car in at the airport and our driving ventures would be over.
We came back into the city on a different route than how we had left, not that I was well acquainted with any route at all, but I most likely returned on the most difficult route. It would hardly be an exaggeration at all to say we encountered over a dozen roundabouts while nearing the airport. It was Tom-Tom’s fault. In directing us to the shortest way geographically, we were also midst the busiest and slowest way. City roundabouts, which were usually three lanes wide, had not become any less confusing to me in the passing days. With the unwavering words of Tom-Tom, coupled with my son’s interpretation of them and much mumbling and grumbling from myself, I was able to negotiate the way to Edinburgh Airport. I circled the airport and completely missed the turn for the car returns. I stopped to ask directions and we circled the airport again.
With a great sense of relief, I pulled up to the car hire booth. The man working there, upon hearing my American accent immediately began inspecting every square inch of the exterior, looking close for the slightest scratch or ding. I believe he was somewhat surprised and impressed when he found none. So was I.
It is not my intent, by any means, to discourage driving in Scotland, for if I had not hired the car, we would have missed out on many of the better experiences. When comparing the added stress to the added value of the places we were able to go I would have to say, though cringing slightly, that I would do it all over again. With that said, I would also strongly urge anyone driving for the first time in the United Kingdom, or anywhere else where it is opposite the western world, to start slowly. Don’t begin with long drives from city to city as I did. Also, don’t hire a car the day you arrive. Take a couple of days to look around and see how things are laid out. Oh, and don’t forget to purchase the deductible free insurance.
Last, but not least, there were times now and then, even I’ll admit, that it was fun.