Roads - London

When we hired the car from Avis, I had to negotiate the streets of London and suburbs until we got to the motorway out of London and then I had to do it on the way back. That was enough for me - the traffic was heavy and the streets were narrow.

In the central district of London, there is a congestion tax of 8 pounds per day. Avis added to this fee to our bill for the pick-up and return. You can tell that you are in the taxed area because there are signs on sign posts and a logo on the pavement. The logo is a big C in a red circle - it looks like our clearway symbol.

Suburban streets are often two-way even when there is only enough space for traffic in one direction. They paint a dividing line in the middle of the road but then they often paint areas for parking within the lanes in each direction. This leaves less than 1.5m between the parked cars and the centre line.

So you need to ignore the centre line and drive between the parked cars on either side of the road. You wonder why they don't just make it a one-way street. Why pretend?

In one case, there was a pushbike in front of us. There wasn't enough space between the parked cars to overtake him.

When a car comes in the other direction, one of you needs to find a gap between the parked cars (such as a driveway to allow the other car through). You are just as likely to find a double-decker bus coming the other way.