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

Your car will often say what fuel to use - for example, my parents' Volvo cars have *always* been recommended to use SP 95.

Whoami?

Hi all,

this looks like a great improvement, !

one suggestion would be to include some info on the items that you are legally required to have in a British car when driving on the contintent: headlight adjusters, reflective red triangle, first aid kit, spare headlight bulbs, err... some other stuff i can't immediately remember...

anyway, jobzagood'un
cya
spiff

Anyone got any views about the route-finding thing? I think it could be a genuinely useful addition, but I'm happy to abide by the opinion of the majority!

Could be worth adding how to find road numbers... after all, you missed it

Well, you can only really tell by looking at the map, in most cases.

The British way is that you find the road number on the map and look for it. Try applying that tactic in France and what happens is you find the road number on the map and then drive in circles round the town you're in, until you spot a sign that looks like it's pointing vaguely in the direction you want to go.

Then you find they've sent you along the congested main 'N' road when you wanted to go via that nice-looking 'D' road that goes along the river valley.

Read my response to that earlier in the conversation... the N and D numbers generally are shown, just not until you actually get to the junction itself.

Sorry, I missed all that completely.

You're absolutely right, they do have those little yellow panels on top of the roadsigns at junctions and roundabouts and so on.

But as I remember it, they're mainly in the country - inside a town of any size, usually when going round a typically confusing one-way systems (that's typical for anywhere, not just for France!) you only tend to get those Green or White (or occasionally Blue) pointing signs without any numbers on them.

That's what I was trying to get at - you're fine once you're out in the country, the trick is managing to escape the town you're in on the right road and heading in the right direction.

Nice entry, can't fault it really, but...

I'd add a bit about indicator use (this applies to most of the continent, but especially in France).

In France, most drivers leave their indicators on for the duration of their overtaking manoeuver and then turn it off as they pull back in to their original lane. Likewise, if you're in the 'fast' lane on a motorway and a driver is indicating, it means they want to overtake you.

The other thing (in your petrol section) - beware of unmanned stations (usually late at night only) that take credit cards only. They expect the French chip-cards only, and won't accept other cards, even if they've got a chip in them.

Good point about the credit card petrol pumps... I forgot about that!

(It works the other way too! Tesco petrol pumps don't like my French credit cards )

At least when I encountered one of those pumps I had a French passenger who could sub me until we got to the next cashpoint

And before anyone says it, I just realised there was more than one page and that the indicators point had already been made. I think it's much more common than you'd think, though, and I find myself doing it in France, too.

Wondered if you'd notice

So that makes three things to be added:

The bit about indicating on motorways

The fact that direction signs do not tend to have road numbers on them

The warning about credit-card pumps only taking French credit cards.

Did I miss anything?

Looks ok... You happy to do it Gnomon or do you want me to knock up a couple of paragraphs you can copy and paste in later?



PS...
(And I mean _completely_ off topic!!!)

Hows the weather over there Gnomon?... looked at the news this morning and it looks like there's a full scale hurricane heading for Dublin

The weather is grand at the moment, but we've been warned of gales. My favourite weather site is suitably non-committal with "100% risk of precipitation, winds 24 - 78 mph".

I'll try and put together some paragraphs later on today.

24 to 78?

That's what you call hedging your bets...

At least they can't get accused of not warning people (remember 1987 )

It's suspiciously quiet here at the moment - we had a bad storm in 1997 which knocked out electricity almost everywhere and did millions of pounds worth of damage. I hope tonight isn't a repeat of this...

Woodpigeon

For further conversations about the storm, please go to F1997?thread=344677.

Back on subject, I've added stjarna and Number Six as authors. I've put in sections about indicating on motorways, credit-cards at pumps and lack of road numbers on direction signs.

Looks great - and cheers for the author credit, even though my contribution was minimal

As Rowan Atkinson once said - 2500 french men are klled on the roads ever year.



As frightening as the statistic is....................

Is just isn't enough!

Try nudging them off, it makes a great family day out to see a citreon rolling across the hard shoulder and down the embankment..,...