h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

People visiting Scotland, especially the Highlands, should please keep in mind that there are actual people who live and work there too. These people normally appreciate tourists and exhibit the usual Highland hospitality. However they have lives too and so may be late for work, or have an emergency they need to deal with, so after driving behind a tourist for 100 miles they tend to be a bit aggrevaited. To help both the locals and the tourists here are some driving tips for visitors.

1. Drive on the left.

2. The scenery is great, the wildlife fantastic. However the proper way to appreciate it is NOT to dawdle along at 20 mph (especially on 'A' roads, or around Loch Ness), find a place to stop and enjoy it properly.

3. On single track roads the locals will be quite familiar with the roads and be relativly fast on them - so please pull in and let them past.

4. Even normal roads are very windy and still quite narrow. The locals may be impatient behind you. They do not want you to speed up when you find a straight part of the road. This keeps them behind you and fuming when you, again, slam on the anchors at the next corner. Stay fairly slow and allow them to overtake. They will appreciate it.

5. On single track roads only pull into passing places on the left hand side of the road. If the passing place on the right then just stop beside it and let the other vehicle pull into it.

6. Careful with full-beam on your headlights, remember to dip when there is traffic ahead (going either way).

7. The wildlife is not static - so careful, they can jump out of the side of the road. Not too bad when you get a bird strike, but a red deer will turn your car into a write-off. One researcher has seen a such a wreck - where the antlers had punched right through the passangers seat, luckily no-one was sitting in it at the time.

The locals will appreciate this, and you will not be lectured when you pull in, or 'walnutted' (this where, after 30 miles of the worst kind of tourist in front them, the local manages to overtake on a fairly fast piece of road and lobs a walnut out to smash on your windscreen - lots of noise and no damage, but a nasty, nasty shock.)

With more knowledge on driving for tourists, means less stressed locals, which means they will be nicer. Well, enough for now, until later....
BCNU - Crescent

Other boring old 'countryside code' things:

- DO slow down if overtaking a horse and rider (or passing them on the other side). Unlike the town police horse which is more like a brick wall than an animal, normal horses can be startled and, despite a hundred years of cars, they still regard the vehicles as 'spooky'. A spooked horse may bolt and/or throw its rider.

- Just like railway stations, the countryside has very few litter bins. Unlike railway stations, it does not have cleaners so take litter home (or at least as far as the nearest railway station).

- In the UK, OS maps are your friends. If planning to go off the beaten track, learn to read a map and remember to take it with you. Reading a map is easy, since they all have a key in the corner. Map-folding however is an art that takes years to master.

- If walking on the coast, check tide times so you don't get stranded. Much as us West Country types enjoy watching news footage of emmets and grockles being air-lifted from rocks whilst clutching their buckets and spades it's
a) not nearly as funny as a cow being air-lifted from the rocks
b) rather dangerous