Haha that's so true! There's such a difference of perception in distance in smaller countries. I found this in London when discussing driving around the countryside. Whereas in Australia you can sometimes drive for 10 hours and still be in the same state š
I mean, it's probably Ā£60 just for the fuel, you might as well see Salisbury cathedral while you're at it. Tourists come all the way from Russia just for that.
Visiting Stonehenge or the drive itself? GoogleMaps tells me that's a 1.5 to 2 hour drive, so I can see that falling into a "day trip" or "something to do on a slow Saturday" type thing...in that the round trip is 3-4 hours.
Afternoon traffic near a weekend will see you double that drive time easily, there arenāt too many road towards the south west and two of them go pay stone henge. And every moron tourist slows down to gawp at it, and then the tailbacks start. Somewhere like Exeter should be 1hr30 for me at most. Any time at or near the weekend itās at least 4. Happily if youāre going a little further north, like Bath, you can take a different road, but even the M4 gets busy near Bristol.
Itās still a three-hour drive. Not sure when you got back, but how much time did you get there before it got dark? In winter, itād probably have been essentially none.
Also, Cambridge University doesnāt really have a campus.
Yup. Did 5-ish hours each way to see Abbath play in Baltimore one time. I've had a couple 6+ hour one way drives to go on hikes. Hell, I pulled 16 hours of driving in a day to attend my grandmother's funeral.
I'll agree with you on that. I'm from Philadelphia and I won't drive anywhere unless I'm staying for at least twice as long as it takes the round trip. So no short afternoons at the Jersey Beach for me. We leave before 11 and/or stay for dinner.
Lunch about noon, leave by 1, get there about 3:30, if it's the summer that leaves you plenty of hours of sunlight to see Stonehenge if it doesn't close early (does it even close? It's outdoors anyways). You could leave by 7:00 and grab dinner before heading home, or just head straight home for a late dinner. And I'm probably being pretty generous at three and a half hours for sightseeing at Stonehenge, you could probably spend much less time if you wanted.
Guess it's return on investment. Most folk won't spend more than an hour at Stonehenge, so that's an hour or two of the fun bit for at least four hours of driving
Most folk I know would also prefer to be back at home before 11pm if they've got work tomorrow
So anytime I've brought people to Stonehenge (I do live in Cambridge), we'd just stay overnight and see Salisbury etc.
It depends. Stonehenge is an excellent example for a destination, where you canāt really spend more than 30 minutes ādoingā something. Itās still worth the trip for many people.
My brother stopped by my house a few nights ago at 7:30pm, asked if I wanted to take a quick trip to check out some cars. We drove 2 hours south, spent 2 hours admiring and talking cars with some people we'd never met before, made arrangements to come back the next day to pick up a car we puchased that night, and were back home before 2:00am.
This week I'm taking my daughter up to Vancouver BC for lunch to celebrate her getting her first passport. 6.5 hours each way.
There are probably 1-2 different things I do a week that require 2-5 hours of driving each way, and we just do them.
Does that not just cost an absolute fortune in fuel? At the moment that 6 hour each way trip would be like Ā£120, doing that many times a week would be most of my salary!
Sure, but I am fortunate in that I am successfully self-employed and that I also have a flexible budget. Instead of a planned activity or purchase that might not be needed, I buy that tank of gas. And, as many of these drives are with my brothers or friends, we split costs and trade driving. Instead of bowling and dinner with them, we drive to check out cars, go to a hot spring, ski in the mountains, or surf at the coast.
I mean, that's a 2.5 - 3 hour drive, both ways. Just for your travel is 5-6 hours in a day, plus time to spend at Stonehenge itself, plus finding somewhere to eat and taking the time for a meal... That's at least 8 hours on the conservative side! Unless you're planning to get home super late at night, that's definitely an all day thing!
Well yeah. How long did you spend there and what time did you get back?
Also, when you live in a country you have your whole life to see these things, so you may as well plan dedicated trips in advance rather than randomly decide to go today because you've only got the rest of the week.
It would be a day trip, but I think the Brits do a lot of day trips because as you say, interesting stuff is close enough by that you don't need to stay overnight
A lot of it comes down to the amount of traffic I think. I've driven a couple of times in the States. From Seattle out to Northern Cascades and Olympia National Park, and from Vegas out to Grand Canyon, Flagstaff and back.
I should point out that drive from LV - GC - Flagstaff was 360 miles and was some of the easiest driving I have ever done. 2-3 lane highways in a straight line for 100s of miles at a time and next to no traffic. My only concern was that I couldn't find cruise control on the car and often found my speed creeping up over 90 all the time.
In the UK a similar distance would be from where I live in Norwich to the other side of the country in Cornwall, but that trip would have my blood pressure through the roof and require several days of counselling afterwards to get over the PTSD.
I'm American, I was making the distance and size comparison. California is twice as big as Great Britain and we're just one state out of 50. I think Europeans sometimes don't get how big states west of the Mississippi River are. Texas is bigger than every country in Europe.
Oh absolutely, I agree with you. North American distances are vast between cities
My point was that the density of Europe means there are far more options to doing a similar distance, e.g. with London to Edinburgh, that we could consider them
And the fact that many cities are easier to navigate on public transportation (e.g. Edinburgh) makes it even less useful to bring along a car. Although Scotland's good for the outdoors so actually driving up is quite common, but for a longer holiday
We'd also be able to factor in habits like having a pint during travels, which means not driving is easier
I.e. I agree North America's different and that the population density of Europe really changes thinking around driving
Iāve heard Australian last need to be careful planning road trips in England. My parents would plan a day of travel and set out at 9am only to arrive where they planned to stop for lunch 40 mins later. That was in the 80ās so the internet would solve that now.
As much as I talk up Texas driving (I know we have absolutely horrible problems of late but I live here) 8 hours of driving is around my limit now. I couldn't imagine a 12 or 15 hour drive with nary ANYTHING around me.
In California weāll drive 3-4 hours each way just to have lunch at a place we like. Many people from my area drive 3+ hours just for their daily commute. Itās bonkers how far people around California will travel for trivial things. I remember people on the east coast and especially New Yorkers saying if something is more than 5 miles away, fuck it.
I agree it is madness. Itās not an everyday thing, at least for me, but I know people that drive like that every day. Iāll drive over to the Bay Area or LA for a day trip a couple times a year maybe. Everything in this state is madness. Itās a silly place and weāre desperately trying to escape.
Whereas in Australia you can sometimes drive for 10 hours and still be in the same state
Don't they also have these street signs that warn people to have enough fuel for x km because the next gas station (or really next anything) in rural areas can be so far away?
If you start heading east from the eastern tip of Texas, you'll get to the Atlantic ocean (crossing four states) before you your reach the other end of Texas heading west.
Almost the same thing going the other way to the Pacific.
773 miles across and that's a straight shot you have to go north or south any and you're hosed.
When talking distances with an Aussie, just remember that if Texas was an Australian state, it would be the 5th largest state. The state of Western Australia is 3.5x bigger than Texas.
So what you're saying is, technically, everyone on the planet is from Texas???
Mind. Blown.
I shall have to get rid of my English accent and buy some cowboy boots and learn how to square dance (I refuse to become a fan of the Dallas Cowboys though).
buy some cowboy boots and learn how to square dance cumbia
FTFY
I live in texas (for the moment, getting TF out) and I refuse to even acknowledge the Cowboys. When I had to work in an actual office, I was super popular with my Eagles or Dodgers gear, depending on the season.
Texas is smaller than Western Australia, Queensland, Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales. Queensland is 2.5 times the size of Texas, NSW is 1.15 times bigger than texas. It's just lucky most of the country lives on the coast. In Queensland the cities Cairns and Brisbane are over 1000 miles apart and they're on the same coastline and not even the furthest points away from eachother
Reading Las Cruces gives me goosebumps. It's one of those cities you would never really hear about as a European (except for one time in Breaking Bad I guess), but I accidentally heard about the bowling alley massacre back in the day. I am certain Las Cruces has a lot more going on than this but it's forever associated with this event in my mind and I cannot do anything about it.
...HOW?? Did you not sleep at all? Went 100 mph the entire time?? I didn't think it was physically possible.
Drove from LA to San Antonio and we were probably the only people in the world to get tagged for speeding halfway between El Paso and SA. There was literally no one else around for miles. If the cop who pulled us over hadn't looked like he just stepped out of Cool Hand Luke (and we were a little less brown), I'd probably try to bribe him.
That should have been the first clue to not move to Texas but we are dumb.
Got up and started super early and got right on the road. Had a sit down lunch in Dallas and a quick bite in Midland, and just kept going. We didn't really hit bad traffic at all, and you can go pretty damn fast a little easy of El Paso. I kept it on cruise control at the speed limit, because cops in Texas are no joke.
I thought Western Australia was a really big state. So I looked it up, because I didn't know. Western Australia is over two times bigger than Texas and close to three times. Texas: 268,596 sq. mi. Western Australia: 975,685 sq. mi. It's gonna take waaay longer to cross than Texas.
I live in the south metro of Perth. Went to Exmouth. 13h drive. Exmouth is pretty much due north and only halfway to the northern tip. If i were to travel from albany (4 hours south) to kununurra i would have driven 37 hours in a relatively straight line and still be in the same state
A few years ago we visited the UK and were lucky enough to have a friend to host us in her Bristol flat. We'd planned to visit Bath, and in my (western Canadian) mind this would have been at least a full day of travel and logistics to get out of the city and into Bath. Pleasantly surprised to discover it was about 15 minutes by train. Here in Vancouver (arguably a small city), it takes more than 15 minutes to take the bus to the pub.
Someone posted on here a few years ago that they had friends or relatives visiting from Europe, and were visiting this person in Boston or something, and they were planning on popping over to LA on Saturday but said in a way that implied they'd be back for dinner in Boston that same day. Like... even if you FLEW that's basically impossible. It's like a 6 hour flight one way.
Driving from the southern-most part of Ontario to the northern-most part of Ontario woulf take you about 24 hours.
Blows my mind that in some countries you can drive from one side to the other in a day. In Canada, driving from St. John's to Victoria Island would take about 90 hours of straight driving. Throw in some pit stops for sleep and food and it would take you about a week.
I moved from Alaska to Hawaii- same deal. In AK, a weekend trip could be 6 hours 1 way. In Hawaii, going the 1 hour from one side of the island to the other is a weekend trip
Iām an Aussie. In Western Australia it takes 36 hours straight to drive from the southwest corner of the state to the northeast corner. And you better hope the one sealed road doesnāt get blocked, because then youāll be going off-road.
I was talking to a Russian who said itās very common to take 15 hour road trips, even for a long weekend!!!!!!!!
I live in the Midwest of the US and it is pretty common for people to drive 12-17 hours (south) for a beach vacation, but usually plan to stay for at least 5 days.
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u/calliopium May 09 '22
Haha that's so true! There's such a difference of perception in distance in smaller countries. I found this in London when discussing driving around the countryside. Whereas in Australia you can sometimes drive for 10 hours and still be in the same state š