David R. MacIver's Blog

Road trip!

Given that I’m on a break, I figure I should do something more interesting (and restorative) than just sitting at home studying mathematics (though sitting at home studying mathematics is going very well and I’ve learned a lot of interesting things about graph theory and combinatorics).

Which is how the idea of doing a road trip started. I’ve done a road trip across Namibia after PyCon Namibia, but I’ve actually spent very little time exploring the UK.

After posting the idea on Twitter it rapidly went from “Hmm maybe I should do this” to “Oh I guess I’m doing this”. I’m going to be doing a big road trip across the UK in November. It’s a silly time of year to do it, but oh well.

The plans are vague, and they will continue to be vague even while I’m doing it, but here’s what I’ve got so far:

I will be departing home some time on or before November 11th (Ideally closer to November 3rd (this Thursday), but there are some things I need to sort out) and returning home some time on or before November 24th. Probably a couple days before.

I will be driving from Lands End to John O’Groats (specific destinations I want to visit meant I was going to do like 80-90% of that anyway, so I figured I might as well enact the cliche).

I don’t really yet know what I’ll be doing or where I’ll be going in between. Here’s what I know:

• I’ll be visiting the Eden Project.
• I’ll be visiting the Falkirk boat wheel.
• I’m going to spend a couple days in Edinburgh.
• I’ll probably stop by Birmingham for at least a night.
• I intend to visit a lot of large second hand book stores.
• I intend to do a lot of walking, both in the country side (weather permitting) and exploring cities and towns I haven’t been to.
• I mostly don’t intend to know where I’m going to be exactly more than about a day in advance, and will largely be staying in a mix of youth hostels and airbnbs with the occasional stop over with family and friends (family and friends reading this: If you want to offer me a room I will probably happily accept...).
• I do not intend to pass through or particularly near to London

Anyway, I mention this partly because there will probably be a bunch of blog posts on the things I’m doing, and partly because I want suggestions. In particular:

• Places I absolutely have to visit (I will probably ignore > 50% of these but I’d still like the suggestions).
• If you live in the UK and I don’t get to see you often (or even if we’ve never met!) and you’d like to meet up, let me know and if I’m passing vaguely your way (for values of “your way” that may include “somewhere in the region of 100 miles of you) I’ll come say hi.
• This is includes if you’d like me to come visit your company, tech meetup group, etc. though this is primarily not a working trip and I can’t promise I’ll be in full technical mode if and when I do.

Answers welcome in comments, tweets, email, whatever.

That’s all for now.

Comments

David on 2016-10-30 19:15:12:

I’ve done a fair amount of exploring the UK, largely because my wife isn’t from here and so likes to see the country. I’m not going to make specific suggestions, because there is so much that you could see on such a journey that it becomes almost pointless.

Something that might be fairly obvious, but it has tripped me up in the past, is that you don’t get many hours of good daylight in the UK outside of the summer months, so at this time of year you really have to use the time effectively. And the main joy of driving around Britain is taking time to look at things. So make sure you are on the road as early as you can bear, so that you get somewhere interesting by the time the brightest part of the day arrives. Urban living has conditioned me to think that 3pm is the middle of the afternoon even in winter. But if you think “I’ll get to that interesting location by 3pm, it’ll be fine”, you’ll find that the light is already starting to fade too much to appreciate it properly.

Another perhaps obvious thing: Stay out of cities and larger towns as much as possible, due to traffic. Attractions that are in the countryside or small towns represent a better use of your time budget.

The UK has lots of staggeringly beautiful scenery. We’re so used to it, and so used to pictures of the more exciting topography of other parts of the world, that it’s easy to overlook how beautiful it can be until you find yourself somewhere that takes your breath away. So don’t just travel around on motorways and big A roads. Much of Wales, the Peak District, Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, Pennines, and much of Scotland are very rewarding in this respect.

david on 2016-10-30 19:47:35:

> Something that might be fairly obvious, but it has tripped me up in the past, is that you don’t get many hours of good daylight in the UK outside of the summer months, so at this time of year you really have to use the time effectively.

This is a really good point that I was 100% going to overlook. Thanks, that was super helpful.

> Another perhaps obvious thing: Stay out of cities and larger towns as much as possible, due to traffic. Attractions that are in the countryside or small towns represent a better use of your time budget.

I do have a couple cities I’d like to actively visit, and my time budget is relatively unconstrained in terms of actual driving - I’ve got a lot of time to cover not that much distance, so I might end up ignoring this advice. I’ll bear it in mind though and experiment to see what works fo rme. Thanks.

nick j on 2016-10-31 22:20:46:

www.scarthinbooks.com/

great bookshop, nice part of the world.