A Drive in the Country

Because I gave him the test date my driving instructor decided to find a variety of roads to wander over today. It was brilliant sunshine for a while and this brought out the motorist. All the roads were busy and we kept getting held up by learner drivers still thirty hours behind me according to how slow they were taking the bends. And bends there were! While the US and some other countries makes long straight roads, the UK has miles of bendy twisted roads that have evolved over eons. Quite how the A1071 from Sudbury to Ipswich twisted so much we pondered today but could not work it out. When the Romans arrived the strengthened the roads and ensured they travelled in a straight line from start to finish, 'Stane Street' is one such and lies outside my window. These roads were already ancient tracks by that time however why did our road take so many turns? Ancient forest covered this land for thousands of years and in the last thousand kings used the area for hunting and for much of that time the trees remained untouched. Having your head lopped of stopped some folks from knocking them down. Small local tracks in areas where people should not have been living may have been interconnected over time and now give us a busy road full of lorries, vans and learner drivers. The added bonus of two dirty big agricultural vehicles blocking the road helped cheer those behind me as they fumed at my habit of sticking to the speed limit!
Even his devious plan of returning along the A12 did not put me off, although the police car that ran along beside me was unhelpful I thought. I noticed that my hand were somewhat sweaty as I grasped the wheel doing 80 as we overtook the lumbering lorries. I was reminded that 70 is the limit once or twice... A good day, apart from stalling three times, almost running into someone at a crossing and failing to find the gears once or twice - in the fast lane! I wonder if I should go on with this....