Motors and Me

A few weeks back, I went out for my first (and so far only) drive for pleasure in the Zed. Unfortunately, I had a passenger, so it was mostly pretty sedate. On the way home, however, I turned onto a stretch of road I don't think I've used before and it was... spectacular. Not for the views, but for the sheer rollercoastery nature of it. The road in question is the B6320 between Bellingham and Otterburn is frickin' awesome. Actually, I can only vouch for a small part of that, as I joined it coming off the Greenhaugh road and most of the fun was over by the time we reached the A68. Still, what a fabulous couple of miles of tarmac.

How hard can it be? Get twenty-odd people to drive cars round a single-lane track together, maintaining a constant speed. And yet, even in this simple environment, they still manage to create traffic jams. I'm sure it's no complete solution, but really... come on... just keep your bloody foot off the brake pedal! Stop panicking people behind into making their own over-reactions. This, perhaps, is the one issue on which I actually agree with Clarkson — people who the brake on the motorway when no-one ahead of them is braking should be shot. Still, it's a brilliant little experiment. I look forward to seeing what solutions the researchers propose.

Sometime last year, a new channel called Dave launched on Freeview. It's aimed squarely at blokes like me and, from the off, it's been showing re-runs of the entirety of new-generation Top Gear. Not just TG, obviously, but quite a lot of it. Recently, however, it's kicked into motorsport overdrive with the addition of WRC and a quality little show called GT Racer. When I first caught GT Racer, I was really unimpressed. In hindsight, I think I just misunderstood it. Although it follows various historic race series across Europe and the States, it's more in the mold of a fly-on-the-wall documentary than a WRC-style sports highlights programme. There's absolutely no narration, the interviews with competitors and mechanics are entirely one-sided (you never hear or see the interviewer or his/her questions), and the racing highlights have a distinctly cheap-sounding, techno soundtrack. Actually, I've read somewhere that it's Kraftwerk, but it makes the whole t