So we ended up driving 6000km in 6 weeks, and learned a few things about driving in Europe. Unfortunately the only photos of the Red Peugeot 308 station wagon we had were on my stolen phone, so you can’t see the car.

Here are some tips and reflections:

A brand new Peugeot 308 is a lot nicer to drive than a 10 year old Honda Odyssey or Hyundai i30.

NZ’s obsession with importing obsolete technology (ie Jap imports) is not wise, when you see the improvements in new european cars and the safety benefits you get.

Having French licence plates is pretty useful. No-one worries when you do something silly.

Knowing the road rules in each country would probably be helpful, but who has time for that?

British people love roundabouts. Whenever there is space for one, they put one, seemingly regardless of whether you need it or not. Travelling becomes a series of short stretches between roundabouts.

Brits also love speed cameras, and obsessively move into the slow lane (I think that might be the law!) so it was unusual to see someone driving constantly in the middle or fast lanes where we were.

Sat navs are extremely helpful and extremely unhelpful. In Britain, we kept getting recommended to take roads that were narrow, country lanes where locals would travel at 6o mph missing you by mere centimetres as you passed. We wanted a “common sense route” setting, but there wasn’t one of those…

Driving a left hand drive on the left hand side of the road is sometimes quite hard…

In the Nederlands, speed limits are aspirational. If the limit goes from 130 to 90 on the motorway, there is no reason to slow down from your 150-170k speed. Plus, you should drive as close as you can to the car in front of you. If you don’t get the vehicle close warning, you’re too far away. Two second rule doesn’t apply here.

In France, there is this right hand rule that means if you are travelling along a straight road, you sometimes have to give way to cars entering from the side roads. Sometimes there might be a helpful “cedez le passage” in the middle of a long straight road, but otherwise a car just turns out in front of you and has the right of way. This might sound crazy. Because it is.

I couldn’t park the car so it was aligned with the car park, even after 6 weeks.