Mental note to self: dont go visiting places when it is going to involve driving home in a westerly direction around 6pm when the sun is getting low in the sky.

What a nightmare it was coming home from Penshurst today! We were going through a series of tiny roads, not quite as wide as two cars, often bordered by steep banks or brick walls or hedges right up to the edge of the road. To make it worse the sun was shining in just such a way that I could not see properly.

If it was not shining in my eyes it was reflecting in the dust on the windscreen to create a glare and shining on the dashboard so that it was reflected in the windscreen. The combination of that lot made it so that I would often be forced to slow to a crawl as I really could not see where I was going. Not being familiar with the roads I was erring on the side of caution, not knowing where all the sharp bends were.

And there were a lot of sharp bends and blind corners. This didn’t seem to put off anyone else: they were all screaming along at 60 mph towards us.

Fortunately I am on holiday and therefore not in a hurry at all, although I think the bloke stuck behind me was not in that lucky position. I also knew that as soon as we got to East Grinstead we would be stuck in a traffic jam all the way to Crawley so there was nothing to rush for.

I still can’t believe how people who live in the country (or even provincial towns) always say “Ooh I wouldn’t drive in London. Its so dangerous!”. Dangerous?? London has things like street lights, roads wide enough for traffic to pass, pavements, white lines in the middle of the road, road signs. Give me driving through London compared to windy country lanes hemmed in by walls of earth and lined with obscured driveways any day.

Other mental note to self: must sort out the windscreen washer on the car so it produces more than a dribble on the drivers side!