On Sat, 7 Jun 2008 09:31:29 +0100, "Dennis Pogson"
wrote:


On the only-150-miles-from-the-sea thing, we all had a laugh this week when
an American Travel brochure, discussing Aviemore (in the Scottish
Highlands), stated that it was "quite close" to Tower Bridge, Buckingham
Palace, and the Houses of Parliament.

Aviemore is around 600 miles from all of these places, and with gas at
$10.38 a (British) gallon, your tourists would find it an expensive trip in
their hired BMW!

Can't blame them for trying though! We need the tourists!


Dennis.


A mile is a very elastic thing in Britain, I find. The three last
miles to Shrewsbury for instance. That's a medieval town, enclosed
on three sides by a loop of the river Severn which guards the castle
and Abbey. It took me an hour plus to cover three miles (as the crow
flies) get to my destination, even using a (non-road-mapped) GPS,
because I missed my turn.

At one point, I found myself driving through an "allotment"
(a survival of the shared land ownership thing for town-dwellers)
ending up at the river bank - on the wrong side!

Brian W