Martin Dawes - The fun's gone out of the open road
The fun's gone out of the open road
THE other day someone in the office said they'd stopped on the motorway for a cup of coffee, found it cost half a gallon of petrol, said I should cocoa, and drove on.
It wasn't always so.
You used to have to Do It Yourself if you wanted a wet.
Fifty years ago when my Dad took us out for a Sunday drive in the family Jowett Javelin we brought our tea break along with us.
Dad would pull up on the grass verge, get out the Primus stove, pump it up, light it, put the kettle on and 10 minutes later we'd have a brew.
Them Mum would rustle through a brown paper bag for the sandwiches, probably Spam. What did we need a cafe for?
It struck me, remembering this, that car journeys are not as exciting as I remember when younger.
Nineteen times out of 20 you get in the car, start the engine and an hour or three later you're there.
Years ago there was always that thrill of uncertainty as to whether you'd actually make it. Cars were not as reliable then as they are today.
My early bubble gum habit saved the day when the radiator leaked and Dad used it to plug the gap.
When I was old enough I had a succession of old bangers all of which seemed to suffer from chronic ruptures in the radiator, oil system or connecting pipes. On journeys over 40 miles the radiator always seemed to blow.
Today's equivalent of old bangers seldom seem to go wrong that way.
Not that I knew much about cars - it took me ages to discover why my first, an Austin A30, still kept moving even with my foot off the accelorator pedal, until I realised I'd left the choke out - but I did know about spark plugs.
Every Sunday I'd whip them out, clean them, check the gap and remember to put them back in the right order. It was surprising how well it worked.
Now everything's electronic ignition which you can't touch.
Incidentally, the A30 didn't always start so you had to give a couple of quick turns with the starting handle, being careful not to break your wrist in doing so.
Near where I used to live, in the West Country, was a long, steep hill and the little Mini I had then only ever reached the top, coughing apolgetically in the crawler lane, in first gear.
I tackled the same hill in an Astra last year and never went below third.
Journeys seem to be over in a flash when they used to take forever. My in-laws took two days to get to the West Country on holiday and even a trip from Sheffield to Bedfordshire, avoiding the motorways, took them four hours. Flask and sandwiches were always packed.
Looking back, time was different then.
When the kids were young, most years we'd tootle off to Norfolk from Sheffield on holiday. It was quite a squeeze, packing three squabbling youngsters, two adults and all our stuff into a Fiat 126 but we did it.
We were always glad of a break at a favourite lay-by three hours into the journey for coffee, pop and KitKats.
Eventually we stopped going to Norfolk but quite recently I did the same journey in a much more modern car and stopped at the same lay-by for old times sake.
I was amazed to see it was only 60 miles on the clock and I had done the journey in less than half the time.
Of course, faster roads and faster cars explained it, and there were no bickering kids in the back.
But were things better? Like a few of my old exhausts, a little bit of excitement seems to have fallen off the back of the car.
Got a view? Add your comment below.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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