Wouter,

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 22:28:36 +0100, Wouter van Ooijen wrote:

> > What exactly is a long journey in the UK?
>
> Trying to use the motorway around Londen in the rush hour. Takes
> forever. NB read Pratchet/Gaiman to find out why.

LOL!  For those unfamiliar, the M25 is an oval-shaped Motorway that surrounds London - it's about 117 miles
round, and the rumours are that the lap record is just under an hour, held by a Porsche 911 and performed at
about 03:00 on a Sunday.  The Police keep an eye out for anyone attempting to beat that, these days.  It's
described as "the biggest carpark in Europe, because it is incredibly busy, and the journey from here to
Heathrow Airport can take between 25 minutes and 2 hours, depending on the traffic.  The trouble is that it's
so busy that anything happening causes traffic jams.  One common problem is hills - HGVs (Heavy Goods
Vehicles) have speed governors these days, and as a result you can get two of them in line abreast when it
comes to a hill, with one barely overtaking.  Since in most places there are only three lanes, a jam forms
behind as cars try to squeeze past them in one lane.  Before governors HGVs could have got a "run up" at
hills, but these days they can't.  I believe the governors (set at 90kph, 56mph) were introduced as a
quid-pro-quo when the maximum weight was increased from 33 to 38 tonnes.

Cheers,

Howard Winter
St.Albans, England

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