UK is really small...

I know that UK is small, but the extent to which the island has limited land mass was made acutely aware to me yesterday.

On Sat, me and two fellow GEPers GS and LS hired a car from Heathrow and drove to Bath for the day (will blog trip details another time). Was great, had a lot of fun hanging out, and was especially interesting to sit with the map of UK that was provided by Avis.

That should have been my first clue. When you rent a car in Canada or US, Avis gives you a map of the region, or province/state. We got a map of UK the entire country including Northern Ireland AND regular Ireland (which is a separate country). Granted, it was split in half, front and back of the map, but it still fit on one sheet of regular map sized paper. Actually, it's on paper that is smaller than the Ontario map I kept in my car at home.

Let me put this into some context:

[right click open in new window might help]

You see the short red horizontal line? That's what we drove, from Heathrow (which is in the far west end of London), to Bath. Total duration = 1hr 15mins (excludes time stuck in traffic trying to get into the Bath tourist area to find parking). That's approx how long it takes to get to Waterloo from my parents' house. Notice how the red line pretty much covers most of the core of the island.

Next you see a red vertical line. That's the distance between London and Edinburgh. LS has driven this before, around 6-7hrs. That's approximately how long it takes most (excluding GKY) to drive to Montreal from Toronto. Notice how this pretty much stretches the bulk of the north-south length of the island.

Granted, these times were calculated from Heathrow instead of Central London. If we had chosen to pick up the rental from a city location, we would have added at least 1.5 hrs to get out of London proper. Traffic is nuts in the city.

I think my point is made. UK is really small!