London to Liverpool

Up, breakfast and then a 400 km drive to Liverpool. London traffic - yuck. It took about 1 1/2 hours to get out of London (maybe - 35 kms) and on to the Motorway. Speed limit is 112 kph but just about everyone goes a lot faster (most of it is 3 lanes). Drivers religiously stick to the slow lane unless overtaking and are incredibly courteous - if you put a blinker on to change lanes, the car behind you flashes their headlights to let you know it’s okay to pull out in front of them. We did get passed by a AMG Mercedes chasing an A8 Audi both doing what must have been well over 200kph (we were doing around 125 and they went past us like we were standing still). As they went passed, the air pressure bubble gave our car a bit of a shake and scared the daylights out of Anne. We stopped at a service centre (they call them “welcome break”) and apart from fuel, there are coffee shops, burger shops and newsagents. They even have a bar with pokies!!! We got fuel and a coffee. We stopped at Stratford-upon-Avon (Shakespeare) and had a look at Anne Hathaway’s house (was going to cost about $40 to go in so we just peered in through the bars around the house/garden). The town had apples and pears growing wild - we even picked and ate some blackberries. We probably would have stopped overnight if we hadn’t already booked Liverpool. We got to Liverpool about 4.30pm. We had booked an “Aparthotel” - when we got there they upgraded us to a 2 bedroom apartment (even had a bath !!!) Dinner at a near-by Pub and then an early night. Looking forward to seeing Liverpool (and more Beatles stuff) over the next couple of days.Read more