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Comment by Gordonjcp | Hacker News Reader

> I think Europeans may not really get how big some of these places are until they experience it first hand

Conversely, I think most Americans don't get how big the UK is, or how much longer it will take to get around than you think.

Look at a map of Scotland. If you start at Glasgow on the west coast about a third of the way up, and drive to Scrabster, the northern end of the A9, that will take you at least 9 hours too.

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And how dense England is - I'm from Leicester and one hours drive (give or take) I can reach Nottingham, Derby, Coventry, Birmingham, Sheffield, Northampton, Lincoln. Two and a half hours drive and it's London, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford....

And if you’re a tourist, add even more time because you’ll stop every 20 miles for a stunning view, castle, or picturesque village. ;)

Driving time in Scotland is largely due to road size/design, not absolute distance. Once you get north of the Glasgow/Sterling/Edinburgh zone, you have a few “major” dual carriage ways and a lot of smaller roads. And the Highlands and Hebrides have single track, so if you’re going to a small coastal village or similar, you might be stopping every few miles to let somebody by in the other direction.

And if you're not a tourist, you'll be somewhere in the mile-long queue of cars stuck behind them, pottering along at 25mph gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles like they've just lapped the Nurburgring in a Veyron and panic-braking every time they see a sheep within 200m of the road.

Or worse, tourist in a caravan. Most terrifying part about driving in Skye is oncoming caravans with no sense of their own width.

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