Whinege
QUOTE=Tony Lee;42148]Probably best to avoid most of the UK and stick to Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway and Iceland if you want to understand the spoken word.
Having just survived 5 weeks starting from Scrabster, down the west coast to Wales and lands end (where it costs close to $10 AU to park - we didn't bother) I can understand where the Aussie term of endearment for those from the Mother Country - "Bloody whingeing Poms" - came from. Believe me, they have plenty to whinge about --
First, there is the rain. Hardly one day without at least a few drops, and many days with plenty more than a few drops.
Then the roads. I don't mean the M1 and such. They are very good and would be even better if people could be persuaded to stop clogging them up by using them. No, I'm talking about the A roads. You would think this means it is quite good enough to drive at or even above the 60 miles per hour speed limit, but after considerable experience, I have come to think it means any bit of tar with a dotted white line down the centre. Never mind that thanks to the criminal incompetence of the entire membership of the ancient Guild of Hedge Trimmers the hedges are not only 20' high (better to go to Sweden and drive back and forth along the 25km-long tunnel - the view is the same and the road is a hell of a lot wider), but encroach on the roadway so far that each lane is about 6' wide. Not only idiots in motorhomes use these roads but full-size tour buses and even semi-trailers use them too - AND they are less inclined to scratch hell out of their paint work than the motor-homers, so you can imagine the consequences of the usual meeting point on tight bends, narrow roads and with the usual 50 cars lined up behind each.
Then there is parking - or rather an extreme lack of parking. Of course the locals have come to believe that the double yellow lines mean they can park in the main street of any country village completely oblivious to the fact that full-size buses need to pass each other in the same street - a street where the last improvement in traffic flow happened 500 years ago when they finally pursuaded the citizens to stop emptying their commodes into the gutter in the middle of the street. That widened it enough to paint a dotted line down the middle and call it a "A" road. The rest of us must pay through the nose - another AU$10 to park and ride - or AU$5 to use the car park in the shopping centre for "up to 4 hours". Makes that expensive bottle of milk or loaf of bread seem like luxury food.
Then of course - forget any hopes of wild camping. The absolute best you will find is an occasional layby that is just wide enough to fit a motorhome let alone huge tractors pulling manure spreaders that infest all roads and occasionally pull into a layby to let the traffic past. If the stink doesn't rouse you then the squeal of 10' diameter tractor tyres rubbing along the side of your nice new motorhome surely will.
I could of course go on and on - it doesn't take very long to fall into the ways of the local inhabitants -- but the absolute pits was reached when in only the second caravan park used in the 5 weeks, I thought I would make some use of the 5 million gigawatts of energy pouring out of the BBC tower right next to the Crystal Palace van park (where burglar alarms go off day and night due to the electrical interference and you can cook meals by just putting the pots outside near the tower) and watch the local TV programs instead of using the satellite system. It was very nerve wracking as unlike Oz where they gave up such a silly system 50 years ago, the Brits have a whole system of spys who try to catch you watching TV without having paid the several hundred dollars TV license fee. Penalty about $10,000 quid - can you believe that? Kill someone driving unlicensed and without MOT and tax discs and the penalty is a few quid. Same stupid legal system as we have back home apparently.
Anyway, back to the TV. The ultimate bad experience that left the rest of the UK bad experiences in the shade was watching TV and having to put up with adverts - not any adverts mind you but totally tasteless adverts for dunny disinfectants - RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF WATCHING "THE BILL".
Can you believe it?
Maaaaate - best stay home where you won't have to put up with such indignities[/QUOTE]
From a whingeing pom, am I not right in thinking that this post is one big whinge?
