We were on our way back to Crewe. The taxi was to drop Karen and I off at the car hire office and Marcia and Schuyler at the railroad station. The driver had a very thick accent (Cheshire?) but I came to understand that beside owning a taxi service he owned a pub. More traditional (smoke, darts, no children) than the ones that we visited. He had a vague idea of the location of the car hire office, but asked me for it post code. That was when I learned that in the UK a post code would put your GPS very close to wherever you wanted to go. That knowledge became very useful!
The car hire office was on a back street and not very prepossessing. We unloaded our stuff and I went in. I had rented the car via the Internet from SIXT. This was not a SIXT office but they were handling the rental. After a short search the agent found the paperwork for the car. Everything was in order. Except that he asked for a 1000 GBP deposit! I objected, he claimed that it was required by SIXT. He let me call SIXT and I was told that it was required by the local office. I was not very happy because of all of the car rental scams that I had about. But there was nothing I could do, so I acquiesced. As it happened when I returned the car the same fellow was at the counter. He immediately ran my card for the refund of the deposit and it showed up on my statement within a few days.
While waiting for our car we had brief conversation young woman who was renting a car with her neighbors to drive into London to go shopping. She recognized us as tourists. We talked a bit about what we had done and where we going. From her complexion and accent she could have been any of the young women that we met on the canal. She wore a hijab. We were definitely not in Arkansas anymore!
The car was a small Toyota with 6 speed transmission and a diesel engine. Right hand drive of course. We inspected the car and took pictures and we were briefed on the features of the car. One of which, I immediately forgot about it, would retract the side rear view mirrors. We tried to get organized before venturing onto the road. But we couldn’t take much time because the car was parked in the driveway of the agency. Other cars were trying to turn in. So we went a short way down the road and turned into a public parking lot. We should have paid but didn’t. We didn’t sit there very long. We got the navigation system loaded on my iPad sorted out (CoPilot, it worked very well for us) and our paper map folded properly (from the Ordnance Survey). My wife likes to see the big picture while she is navigating. And we set off towards Caernafon Wales.
I have previously driven on the left side of the road a number of times. Five or six trips to South Africa and a trip to Scotland. For driving purposes driving in South Africa is much like driving in the USA. It is a young country. The countryside is open and the cities grew large in the era of the automobile. Beyond driving on the left there is nothing very special in driving in South Africa. No roundabouts in South Africa. When we drove in Scotland we were mostly in the Highlands were the roads were relatively wide or single lane with turnouts and little traffic. Not much problem with driving on the left. If you are familiar with driving a stick shift, shifting with the left hand become natural pretty quickly. I figured, naively, that I was good to go for driving in Wales!
My plan was to take the A55 motorway (freeway) and drive to Caernafon along the coast by Conwy and Bangor. We got out of Crewe with minor excitement and after missing a turn or two found our way, to be on our way, to the motorway. It took only a few hours for the drive from Crewe to Caernafon. We are not talking about big distances. It was pretty obvious when entered Wales. All of the road signs were in Welsh and English. Welsh is very much a living language.