BrE or AmE in your country??

"I've driven all over the US, and I've been through areas where you'd see a house only very rarely (Wyoming or Alaska probably the biggest culprits), but I wouldn't say hundreds of miles along a road."

"Same here. Sometimes you see signs like "Next gas 85 miles", but I've never been anywhere in the US where you have to drive for 300 or so miles between gas stations. Maybe that's the case up in Canada or Alaska, though. "

Hey, guys, you're putting words in my mouth. I said "100s of kilometers", not hundreds of miles, and besides, I admitted it was an exaggeration—but not by very much.

Your contentions are correct if you stick to the main roads, but the United States is more than just the freeway. Check out a road map of Nevada sometime.

My buddy and I once took a back road from Lovelock to Winnemucca once. It was about a 90 mile trip (read: about 150 kilometers). Not only did we not see one single house, we didn't see one single other car, either. It was an unnerving experience; the quiet, so far away from civilization, is deafening. Many similar itineraries are possible in the state of Nevada.

I'm told that Arizona and New Mexico have similarly remote areas, although I've never explored them.

The USA is a physically HUGE country...it's flippin' massive! The distance from New York City to San Francisco is roughly the same as the distance from New York City eastwards to landfall on the tip of Cornwall at Lizard point, England, southernmost point of the UK mainland, way over on the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean.

In comparison, the distance from Land's End to John o'Groats, right up at the northern most tip of the UK mainland, covering the entire length of the UK from south to north, is a wee bit less than the distance from New York City to St Louis, Missouri - as the crow flies.

No part of the UK is further away from tidal water than 110km. The point of the UK furthest away from the seashore is a place called Meriden, Warwickshire, England, just up the road from Shakespeare's home-town of Stratford-upon-Avon.....it's about as far from the sea as is Hartford, Connecticut. The UK is much narrower in width than it is long in length. It will fit very comfortably into the area of several individual American States - two and a half times into Texas alone. The State of Montana has an entire population less than that of three individual Greater London Metropolitan boroughs combined, and only about 70% of the population of the City of Birmingham portion of England's West Midlands Metropolitan County.

Just over 61 million people live in this wee maritime country, floating out on the (not so) blue just a stone's throw off the NW coastline of Europe, with a UK overall density of 246 people per sq km, with England having 383 souls crammed into each sq km, almost the same as in the nearby Netherlands.

Of course the USA has densely populated metro areas, with splurging cities with seemingly never ending suburbia snaking out into the local hinterland, but that very hinterland is VAST in comparison with the UK, and unlike the UK, consists of empty nothingness by UK standards. American distances are a completely different perspective to the British. Here "local" is very much more confined into a much more compact area compared with the USA I would reckon.

Hells bells - hop into your car in many parts of the UK and drive for about half an hour at the very most and you're most likely to find yourself in a totally different kind of area with a different accent, a different landscape and most most probably a different micro climate just for good measure.

In much of the lowland parts of the UK you are very rarely out of earshot of motor vehicles....the hum of distant traffic is a feature of even the most rural countryside. You are never really far from a main road, and in many parts you never have to wait long before a car or even a huge articulated lorry (often with Continental number plates) comes bombing along narrow country lanes through wee villages spaced at regular intervals along the roads and lanes.

Even in the wilder parts of the UK - such as the Scottish Highlands, the Welsh mountains, or the moorlands and fells of the Pennine range of England, or in such places as Dartmoor and Exmoor, in SW England, you may be fortunate to find a spot which is as silent as the tomb except for the drone of a intercontinantal airliner way up in the blue or the tweeting and screeching of birds or the humming of insects or any other kind of wildlife (none of it is dangerous in the UK compared with that of many other countries - unless you pick up an adder (Britain's only venomous snake but even that is hardly lethal unless you are virtually at death's door before being bitten anyway for some reason) - and then stick it down your trousers which is something most Brits tend not to do on a regular basis). But even here in the seemingly most isolated parts of the more remote parts of the British Isles you are nothing like as far from civilisation as you would be in many parts of rural America. You may not actually hear and traffic, but the chances are you may well see distant cars travelling along a road some miles away across the bens or moors or down in a valley somewhere, and even here in the seeming "back of beyond, you are most unlikely to remain undiscovered for very long should you find yourself in some nasty situation, withoiut a mobile phone, and not at all likely to perish from thirst and starvation and end up as a heap of bleached bones after the vultures have finished their supper. That just does not happen here. Even in the Cairngorms a petrol station is never THAT far away, really - or a hostelry offering sustenance - both solid and liquid.

Contained in this tiny island nation the sheer diversity of landscape and individual character of culture and amenities, with one never really far from the other in distance, is quite astonishing really. In short, nothing is TOO far from anything else here, comparatively speaking.....I suppose the equivalent of 20 British miles would be the American 200 miles or maybe more.... at a rough guess.

Yes, Robin Michael - yet another screed ;-) The wee lad cannae help it....

Well, Damian, that pretty much sums up why I like this country (or these countrIES... must be careful around Scotsmen) so much: there's a great deal of diversity, and you're never too far from anything.

You're right, HK - we're never really far from anything else here are we, but of course distance is relative.

I have read that in America people think nothing of travelling 100 miles or even more in order to do or see something quite mundane and then driving back home again.

To us I suppose it's the equivalent of jumping into the car, shooting off a couple of miles or so along the nearest motorway and then be back home again in time for tea and the Weakest Link and Eggheads.

My favourite TV computer nerd - Spencer Kelly....I love his "Click" programs. The shots of the two Forth bridges over the Firth at Edinburgh make me feel very homesick all of a sudden...my family home is only a couple of miles or so away from where that guy was trying on that bandana of his close to the road bridge. What a muppet! ;-)

http://www.spencerkelly.com/

My favourite BBC TV weather guy is Tomasz Shafernaker (of Polish birth and parentage but sounding just about as English English South East England RP as it could possibly get but he has lived most of his life in South East England anyway so that explains it).

In this report on BBC1-TV he said his ball was frozen that morning, poor wee chappie.....that could well be very tricky even though one of the symptoms is a fit of giggles but he made no mention of his other one though did he?...weird! One frozen ball is nothing to giggle about really - I should know as I have been camping in the Trossachs a couple of times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9ctEDqqJtk

This is the link I meant to post showing Spencer Kelly not the one above, but it is early on a Saturday morning after all:

http://www.spencerkelly.com/

Dammit! Oh never mind.....maybe sometime later.....

Damian: Apropos your last point, your comparisons are valid, and so is your point about one-story bungalows.

Whether or not the aforementioned American places are on a main road, these areas represent truly vast areas of places where people COULD live—but don't. (If I could take my detractors on a backroad visit in Nevada, they'd be convinced.) With this in mind, a nation full of one-story bungalows could be quite sensible in the US, but utterly ridiculous in the UK.

Which was the whole point, anyway.

"I have read that in America people think nothing of travelling 100 miles or even more in order to do or see something quite mundane and then driving back home again."

Well, 3 years of living in America has left its effect on me. Today, I took a train down to York and back again in time for dinner, and thought nothing of it. I just wanted an escape from revision. Besides, I needed to justify the purchase of a railcard.

In general, I'm also a lot more willing than my friends to travel across Edinburgh on a regular basis. I couldn't even convince them to make the short hop from Marchmont to the Korean restaurant that just opened on Dundas Street in New Town... so I ended up going alone >_<.

To Damian: Google Shilla Restaurant Edinburgh if you're interested ;-)

To everyone else: The distance from Edinburgh to York is 209 miles according to Google Maps.

"To us I suppose it's the equivalent of jumping into the car, shooting off a couple of miles or so along the nearest motorway and then be back home again in time for tea and the Weakest Link and Eggheads."

Why, heck, Damian, lots of times I have walked further than that.

I remember seeing a map of Cotswold villages in Rick Steve's Europe Through the Back Door. The thing I found amusing is that these villages were 1 mile, 1/2 mile, 3/4 mile apart, etc.: you might as well walk to get from village to village...

"The thing I found amusing is that these villages were 1 mile, 1/2 mile, 3/4 mile apart, etc.: you might as well walk to get from village to village..."

You see that too in the US Northeast though... closely spaced villages are not exclusively an English speciality.

Hongkonger, I cannot even conceive of villages that close together.

On closer inspection, I see that some of the villages are two to four miles apart, but even that distance is still too close for me to conceive as separate villages.

I'm wondering if they're counting from village end to village end, rather from center to center?

<<On closer inspection, I see that some of the villages are two to four miles apart, but even that distance is still too close for me to conceive as separate villages.>>

In Upstate NY, the small towns (not officially villages, since they have no separate governments) are often only a few miles apart. Here's a list of towns near a someone's house (1st column is distance in nautical miles):

Nautical miles - name of town
------------------------------------
1 - Halcottsville
2 - Denver
2 - Kelly Corners
3 - New Kingston
4 - Roxbury
4 - Arkville
5 - Margaretville
6 - Fleischmanns/Griffin Corners
7 - Highmount
8 - Andes
8 - Bovina center

Left out of this list are numous small towns, like Stratton Falls, Bovina, Bedell, Dunraven, Covesville/Clovesville, Halcott Center, West Settlement, Vega, Hubbell Corners, etc.

In great haste with this one during a short break - what you guys in America have in a very big way is space.......seemingly limitless space much of it appearing to us here in Britain to be virgin land - it most probably isn't by any means but you know what I'm getting at.

You guys have room to expand - something which is very much at a premium here in the UK.

We call undeveloped land here "greenfield sites" - open countryside which could well be developed for new housing sites, industrial land or anything considered worthy for further development for any suitable purpose. Of course all these "greenfield" sites belong to someone - that's how it goes, but in cases such as this appropriate deals are made for development projects, and local authorities generally are very keen to preserve as much as they can so precious is open land here in the UK.

Land which has already been developed for many years, and which have become cleared of old properties or sites which have been demolished are called "brownfield sites" and these are always in the more urban areas anyway, and as much effort as possible is made to re-develop and re-build on these "brownfield sites" and in recent years these schemes have become very successful, and many former run-down areas have been turned into very pleasant redevlopment schemes of all kinds.

Of course there are large tracts of the British countryside which are too rugged and wild for such development and many of these are well preserved and protected National Parks anyway.

Americans visiting Britain notice how small many things are here compared to what they are used to in America, from houses, and the spaces between them, and roads. Well, you guys have the space for everything to be, in your eyes, "Bigger'n'better!" ;-)

The UK is literally criss-crossed by not only motorways and major roads but also by secondary roads, and unclassified roads and lanes which are very narrow yet still open for traffic, and all along these narrow roads and country lanes are villages strung all along them - just like this one show here in Kent, South East England - in a very rural area. You may well catch sight of an oasthouse on the left as you pass by it if you look carefully...oasthouses are very much a feature of the Kentish countryside:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUxb1_Sg9nE&NR=1

***Whilst the UK has metricised 99% of its weights and measures, miles - not kilometres - are used for distances and speed limits on road signs***

Very true, HK - we still have road signs indicating miles and the pubs still sell beer in pints but that's all down to a special "concession" (probably pro tem) granted to the UK by the European Commission in Brussels. In much the same way the EU has not (yet) insisted on the UK switching over from left to right hand driving on our roads. The likelihood of that ever happening at any time in the future are probably the same as The Queen chucking in her job as Head of State and choosing to become a checkout operator at the nearest Tesco checkout till to Buckingham Palace, as such a change in a highly diverse, densely populated country such as the UK with its very heavy road traffic flows on a very complex network of roads of all kinds. It would be insane even to contemplate such a thing, and in any case the costs involved in changing everything over to the opposite direction would be astronomical.

In any case, driving on the left is the more logical anyway, manually for most people and definitely historically. We Brits associate right hand driving with countries which came at some time in history under the influence of power crazed dictators.

It's true that British industry, science and commerce are almost entirely metricsed, and I was educated entirely under the metric system, and the old imperial measures, to me, look like something out of the Ark, something that belongs to ages past.