So I've just returned from a week in Kefalonia, Greece. About a month before, I'd looked on the web for car hire. All the leading hirers were fully booked, but I found one that was slightly more expensive @ €40.00 a day, including fully comp insurance, so I booked a Peugeot 208 from the 12th to the 18th. It does take a bit of shopping around; some want insane deposits 'up-front', some don't want a deposit if you take out full insurance, and others offer 'deals' for cash. (Cough, Tax).
I've never driven on the right-hand side of the road before. I have driven a left-hand car, but that was forty-plus years ago. I chose a Peugeot because I drive a 308 at home, so I would at least be familiar with the controls, fat lot of help that was!
There is; it's just on the other side. As I got in the car, I reached for where the belt should be, but it wasn't there. The same can said for the gearstick. For the first few days, I kept reaching with my left hand only to fist bump the door. I found the easiest and quickest way to acclimatise to the new gearstick location was to hold on to it.
I couldn't use the rearview mirror for the first three days. Even though I'd angled it correctly, I found myself leaning over practically onto the missus in an attempt to use it. Fortunately, I was a lorry driver many moons ago, and using wing mirrors for everything is ingrained in me.
Kefalonia is hilly, if not mountainous, so I spent most of the week driving in first and second gear. I only managed fourth on two occasions for barely two minutes each time. Third is achievable on most of the 'straight bits', but most roads are mountain hairpins. Our hotel was on top of a mountain that required 1st gear for the ascension, which feels like cruelty to a car as it revs its guts out, pulling you up.
There are only three roundabouts in Kefalonia; fortunately, I only had to negotiate one. It wasn't as bad as some folk make out, although I will admit I only had to take the first exit on the two occasions I traversed it, so given I'd entered on the right, I left on the right: "See love, I'm a local!" Righthand turns are easy; it's left turns and the infamous "Slide Left" that's scary. Most of Google's "Slide Left" or right instructions were at sections of roads that had three exits, which made it a bit hair-raising, to say the least. I admit I drove over a kerb during one of these manoeuvres while attempting to rectify the wrong choice of exit. BANG as the passenger wheel mounted the kerb.
I heard a loud bang when I drove through a very narrow road with cars parked bumper to bumper on either side. It sounded like one wing mirror clipped another, but the wife assured me I hadn't hit anything. 🤷♂️
When we returned to the hotel, there was a mark on the passenger side wing mirror. I have no idea if it was an old mark or one that I had done. "Meh, I can solve that," I said to the wife and promptly returned from our room with a dollop of toothpaste on my finger. A few circular motions on the mark, and I defy anyone to see anything. The only indication that something was amiss was if you licked the damn thing; it tasted of toothpaste!
I did, however, scrape the passenger front wheel quite severely. They have relatively high kerbs out there and I admit I approached the supermarket a touch too fast. As I lined up the car to be as close to the kerb as possible, I didn't see that one of the stones was protruding out a fair bit, which ultimately caught the wheel scraping off a good seven or eight inches of the rim. As a good and upstanding citizen, I returned the car at the end of the hire period and said naff all to the guy who took the key, and I promptly ran away. 🏃♂️
It's heaps of fun driving in another country. We clocked up 3222 kilometres, but just remember you're not doing MPH.
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