A Road Trip, or a Trip up the Road?

I have a new appreciation of ‘road trips’

I have come across the expression, ‘road trip’ before, of course, but I never thought too hard about it — I just thought it was a ‘trip up the road’ to get somewhere.

It’s only very recently I’ve realised that the point of a ‘road trip’ is the road trip. It’s not the destination so much as the getting there that is the point of the expedition.

Of course, this is largely because the US is HUGE in comparison to the UK. It would be hard to find a trip long enough to qualify as a ‘road trip’ in the UK.

And, in fact, we tend to see our trips up the road as a bit of an endurance test to get from A to B, having to contend with way too much traffic, and bad temper on the way, just hoping we’ll get to B in one piece.

No one dawdles and enjoys the trip because they just want to get to their destination.

Motorways are the most incredibly boring roads to drive on, but they are still the fastest — unless they’re not. If they’re chock-a-block full of lorries, caravans and too-full cars reverberating with screaming children and panting dogs then they’re murderously awful

Years ago I used to enjoy driving, but there weren’t so many cars on the road, then.

Apart from drives I have to make now, the last ‘road trip’ I made was February 2020 before Covid19 really took hold here. I did enjoy that drive because it’s lovely country over that way — into Wales — and because I was going to a fab place to teach painting, which I did once a year. I used to enjoy it.

The Fishguard Bay Hotel (above) is where I stayed and where the painting course was held.

It was still a relief to get there, though. I wouldn’t do the drive if I was just going to turn around and come back again.

Look at that view from the hotel (above) — bliss! And it’s always great weather in Fishguard. It is. Always.

When things are easier again, when it’s not so perilous to travel around simply enjoying the drive, maybe I’ll take a picnic and go on a real road trip, maybe with Doggo driving. And we won’t really go anywhere in particular, and we’ll just drive over there, and then we’ll come home again. And it’ll be a fab.