My brother's car is a Yaris. Geddit? Rolf Yaris. Rolf Harris.
Anyway, I was a bit lost whether to put my account of this week in Panda Endurance or here, I think here is more suitable.
First off, though, the Panda made it, didn't miss a beat, and had been getting about 350-400 miles on a tank of juice depending on the speed. On the way up I took things nice and easy and decided to chop the journey up over two days. Stopped in Strathaven near Kilmarnock for the night after averaging about 80, there was barely any traffic on the Sunday and the roads belonged to me and Rufus.
2nd leg was fine, got to the ferry way too early and got a bit bored in Oban. Took Rufus round some hilly lanes which was fun and passed the time away.
At the port.
For those unacquainted with the Isle of Mull, the road network is either typical two-lane (one for each way) fare and there's quite a lot of single track road too. Having a narrow Panda helped enormously, indeed I nearly had a crash! The road was a gravel track, was doing about 35, car came round the corner in the middle of the road, braked firmly-ish and locked up so had to resort to pumping the brakes and sliding past the car. On the left were rocks, on the right a car, I squeezed through the middle and I honestly cannot believe how on Earth I didn't hit anything.
Other than this it was bloody good fun on the island, some wonderful roads there and also on the way to oban.
There was also one occasion where I thought I broke my Panda. Was coming down some single track and a car was waiting on the left hand side to let me past, the road looked clear so I carried on at about 30 and thought nothing more. BANG! I drove over some sort of stone thing on the side of the road, the landing was so hard the car popped out of gear. Stopped and had a look and, er, everything was fine mechanically and everything is still working fine now.
Passing place. Very useful.
Other than that, things were trouble free. Although an absolute heap of stuff happened today. First on the way to the ferry I witnessed an old man in a Laguna Estate drive into a ditch. What happened exactly I don't know, he might have fallen asleep. Either way he was fine after a bit of reassurance although the police took far far too long to do make an appearance. I had to leave some poor guy from Shropshire to look after him while I dived on the ferry.
Lovely roads.
When back on the mainland things got sillier. There was a surprising amount of traffic which meant slow progress, after a while I was following a silver Astra. We, along with about 10 other motorists in front were following a caravan. We came to some roadworks so I, admittedly very cheekily, overtook the whole queue when it was safe and waited for the lights to change. They did. I went. Very quickly. Safe, though, big empty roads by that time. Anyway, the Astra after a few minutes came clogging up behind me like there was no tomorrow. I turned right at a junction soon after and went for petrol, and he popped in too. Didn't know what to expect, maybe an expression of shock that a Panda can do 90 odd miles an hour. It was this in a way. His words were "You better be counting your lucky stars that I'm off duty." My heart sank, I felt terrible and indeed amazingly lucky.
From then onwards it was plain sailing. The motorway wasn't too bad apart from around Junction 21 (M6) and in my boredom I mostly did 85-90 all the way home. From leaving the ferry on the mainland at about 12 I got home at half 6, with two stops and a bit of a queue in the aforementioned bit of the M6.
All in all it's been a great week, and I'm very proud of my Panda. There must be thousands of flies splattered on the windscreen.
But just look at the roads!
I think that's everything covered. If not, I'll add stuff as I remember.
