getting around

Sometimes when I feel homesick, I listen to a Vancouver radio station. There's nothing like listening to the traffic report and hearing that there's congestion in the Massey Tunnel or that the Port Mann is backed up from 176 westbound. The sense of familiarity is quite comforting and even though I've lived in Derby for a year now, it's very sad that I only really know a few streets by name.

It's really not my fault as many of the street names change by block. For example, the main street of the city centre can be known as Iron Gate, Corn Market, and St. Peters' Street, depending on which stretch of the cobble-stone pavement you're standing on. For me, and for most of the locals here, it is easier to pinpoint a location by the closest pub.

Most recently, due to the opening of the new mall, the traffic pattern has changed to accommodate the shoppers, which makes driving on Derby's incomplete ring -- or psychedelic (almost) figure eight patterned -- road that much more difficult. So getting from point A to point B in the city centre, including getting home from the train station, tends to be easier by foot rather than behind the steering wheel. Or in my case, sitting in the passenger seat beside someone behind the steering wheel.

Because the road system here is a convoluted network of alpha-numeric identified streets (e.g. M1, A52, B3035), driving in the UK is a 2-person job: one behind the wheel and one behind the road map, while both having to decipher the cluttered roundabout signs.




P.S. We have seen much more complex signs but sometimes the camera is not with us.