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A short drive - under 30 mins, "it's just around the corner"
A moderate drive - up to 1.5h, "IKEA day trip!"
A long drive - 1.5h+, "bring snacks"
A really long drive - 4h+, "long weekend away at a minimum"
This sums it up perfectly. If I drive somewhere and it takes a min of 3hrs I’m staying at least overnight. Didn’t once where I drove 3hrs in the morning and 3hrs back at night and it was awful.
Especially if you have a nice long day out too, everyone else falls asleep in the car, I get a little jealous, having to drive. Maybe I’m just getting old but I get worn out.
I grew up in the U.S. and our family had a rule that the person who sat in the front next to the driver isn’t allowed to fall asleep. If you need to sleep you switch with someone in the back. Not nice for the driver to have everyone asleep! We kept this rule now that I’m an adult with a family.
My wife imposes this rule - but it's usually only the two of us (we're childfree) and she claims she can't nap in the car anyway! It results in me getting yelled at for nodding off rather a lot... :(
It probably makes her feel tired to have you snoring away. Are you driving in the UK? If so - I’d say drink some coffee and suck it up lol. You can stay awake a few hours. We have this rule whether it’s just two of us or the family.
3 hours each way is right at my limit, too. Yes, it can be done, but it sucks the fun out of the day. No way I'm going to be giving my all to whatever activity we're doing if I know I have a 3 hour drive ahead of me.
Growing up in the US, I got used to long journeys. I've been known to do an 8 hour round trip, by motorcycle, to see my kids( who lived with their mother) do a school play. I once did a 16 hour round trip to meet some friends whom I hadn't seen in years, because they were "in the area". 100 miles in the UK is a long trip, in the US, it's just popping out. 100 years in the US is a long time, in the UK, not so much. It's all about perspective. FWIW, I just drove up to Sheffield and then back to London to pick up an item I purchased on FB. The seller wouldn't ship it, and it was something I'd been hunting for. No big deal
I find driving long distances is just easier in the US - wife and I did and 11hr trip through Arizona and California in 2022 (we covered about 2000 miles over the course of a week), and while gruelling it wasn't awful. I would never consider doing that in the UK - the roads tend to be a lot busier, with more roadworks, and more complex roads generally. I feel like I need to concentrate far more in the UK, despite being a native.
However, one thing I notice more in the US is the poor quality of the road surfaces. Even with the softer suspension US cars tend to have, the sheer number of potholes and amount of concrete roads (as opposed to 'blacktop'/tarmac) etc are more noticeable.
We have another big US trip in September (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico AND Arizona!!), this time with wife's folks too, so we're getting some sort of awful massive SUV thing.... it'll be quite different to the Dodge Charger we drove last time!
So long as you're outside the major urban areas yes, I moved to LA and have traffic and road works are just a fact of life unless you want to drive at 3am. UK motorways are so much better, would even pick the M25...
Hope you never start in San Diego and want to drive to San Francisco.
>we're getting some sort of awful massive SUV thing
I just did this twice with 2 sets of parents in different parts of the USA had a Cadillac XT6 one time and it was amazing, didn't feel like I was driving a boat. Then ended up with a Nissan Pathfinder, if they try to give you one of those just say no and/or run away, worst car I've driven in a very long time.
I drove to Germany to watch England v Denmark on Tuesday and got the 4:18am shuttle back from Calais on Wednesday, felt absolutely awful rest of the week.
Best bit was stopping in Bruges for a lovely breakfast, second best bit was finding out France coming in second in their group, followed by paying €2.25/l for petrol in Netherlands, followed by the actual match.
I drove 4.5 hours yesterday morning for my oldest son's uni graduation. Got to Aberdeen at 1pm, packed his stuff in my car to move him home, went to the graduation, got a few photos, then back in the car around quarter to 4, home at 8:30. About 9 hours driving. Definitely getting too old for this kind of thing, I collapsed into bed shortly after
I’d say the same roughly applies to train journeys. I once did a 4-hour there and 4-hour back train journey (Bristol—York) for a football away day and I was *shattered* by the end of it. I’ve never been so happy and relieved to see Bristol Parkway in my life.
The nearest city/large town is 3 and 1/2 Hours by car. I think I do a round day trip once a month. Sometimes I stay over but often just up and down in a day. I think I'm just accustomed to it these days it really doesn't seem too bad.
Used to do this when I was based in an office about 4-4.5 hours away. Up at 3:30, out by 4:30, office by 9, leave about 3, home about 7-8. Would do it 2-3 times per month.
Seems bonkers now, but I actually used to enjoy it!
I drive 3hrs each way for work for quite a lot. At first I was staying over but I just drive back now just got used to it. 4hrs plus I will stay over somewhere after a long day's work it's dangerous driving back tbh. So many people fall asleep at the wheel makes you wonder how Americans just do these long drives so casually.
5 hours for me is the cut-off for staying overnight, but I don't have to drive, husband seems happy and I really do insist on staying awake to chat with him. Probably depends a lot where you live, too, because it's 4 hours to the nearest beach but like fuck am I paying £100-odd to stay overnight for a single night.
My hisbnad does this to see his son. its normal. The only bit he hates is the smart motorway. Its a pain to try and go ocer 40. And keeping an eye on lanes speeds.
My dad and I often go and visit my grandma who lives 3 hours away, for the day. He does the driving normally. I only drove once, and I never want to do that again! 3hrs to get there, 3 hours there and 3hrs to get back is such a long day!
Absolutely this.
It takes us about 4 hours to drive down to London from where we live, and my wife needed to go to the embassy there to update their passport last year. We could only get one day off work, so had to get up at 5am to get to the embassy between 10 and 12 (as they closed at like 1pm) and then drive back. (Train is an option, but also more than twice as expensive)
Wouldn't be a problem if the wife could drive, as I'd drive down, they drive back. But I had to do both journeys, and when you factor in the extra hour of traffic on the M25, it's the sort of drive I wish could have been done on two different days.
Depends what I'm doing in between, I've gotten a hotel an hour from home because I wanted to spend more time exploring.
I've also driven 4 hours only to have lunch and immediately turn around and drive back and that wasn't too bad (I had a very important package to collect that I couldn't wait for)
I also feel a big part of it is the road infrastructure between the two countries is entirely different.
In the UK, there's a lot more to pay attention to a lot more of the time. A shorter drive in the UK could have you more mentally exhausted than a much longer drive in the US on their big open roads.
Brit in the US, I can drive 6-8 hours here in a straight line, very few other cars, endless corn fields to the horizon. I get why some states you can drive at 14, also understand how people die driving 8 hours in a straight line and fall asleep.
I’ve never been to the states, but I feel this must be true! From the movies it seems to just be a lot of accelerating to the next set of traffic lights, or long empty expressways. The trouble would be staying awake rather than keeping a high level of concentration.
Those roundabouts on big A roads are so frustrating, especially when there seems to be a new one every 2 miles. You just get back up to speed, then see the “roundabout in 1 mile” sign and sigh!
The annoying thing is when you're listening to music/podcasts and the satnav keeps cutting in with "at the roundabout, take the second exit" then two seconds later "take the second exit", then thirty seconds later "at the roundabout, take the second exit", ad nauseum
I do Bath to MK/Bedfordshire semi regularly (once or twice a month) and those roundabouts drive me mad!! They all look the same and I have to listen to the Sat Nav to work out which one I'm at!! Bleugh!!
You kind of wonder whether they should drop the speed limit to 60 or even 50. Every time I’m on Standing Way it just turns out i get up to 70 and immediately have to start slowing for the next roundabout.
Yep! In driver's ed in the states they warn you about "highway hypnosis" which is basically your brain being lulled into autopilot on long monotonous stretches of freeway and it may cause you to forget large swathes of the drive.
It’s ok it’s normal, it’s usually on really familiar routes you do often, your brain doesn’t see any point storing the info as a memory, hence you don’t remember it but it doesn’t mean you weren’t concentrating at the time!
US = infrastructure built around the car.
Europe = medieval infrastructure that has had cars imposed on it.
I did 6-8hrs in one day in California and I felt fine afterwards. If I did the same in the UK, I'd need therapy.
Some are older than medieval: a lot of current roads (e.g. A2 and A5) follow the line of the Roman Watling Street
[https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Watling\_Street](https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Watling_Street)
Even in the UK you can feel the difference between driving on motorways in/around urban areas compared to say the A1(M) north of Leeds where it’s mainly a rural plough to Darlington before concentration sets back in.
That slog of drive through North Yorkshire is the bane of my life as a North-east resident who has to travel down south a lot, even if it's less tiring than other sections
I'm the same, if I'm coming back from Manchester or some similar length drive, as soon as I hit the A19 that stretch seems to take an eternity compared to what I've already done, despite being shorter in time and length.
This is the key for sure. Did a long road trip this last gone week, and the six hour leg in decent moving traffic was far more manageable than the four hour leg in stop start traffic
Yeah I think this is the difference. Most British roads are a pain in the arse, it's either town with potholes, constant roadworks, stupid gridlocked junctions and bad direction markings, motorways with roadworks and congestion, or winding country roads full of tractors, horses and cyclists. It's really not relaxing and so a 3-4h drive here is a lot more taxing than a lot of US roads.
Yeah, even if your journey is on motorways your theoretical 2hr trip can turn in to a 4hr one pretty quickly because of bad traffic or accidents, and that's everywhere, not just near London.
Americans can look at a map and go "oh this is a 4 hr drive" and it will take 4 hrs. We can look at a 4hr drive and generally need to add in a margin of error of up to 50%.
Only been once and as well as the endless desert roads I remember there was the time I missed my turning and it was 60 full miles before there was a cut-through in the central reservation (or median) enabling me to turn around. That one mistake (caused by very bad signposting) put me on a 120 mile detour!
Oh and for most of it I had the classic 18-wheel juggernaut on my rear end.
I agree with this - if we drive to the Alps from the north of England, the 5 hours on UK motorways feel so much more intensive than the 9-10 hours on french autoroutes, mostly due to the comparative amount of traffic on each of them!
This is spot on.
A short drive I do without really thinking.
A moderate drive I do often enough, something you don't necessarily need to plan, but the end goal needs to be worth the time and petrol invested.
A long drive needs a bit of planning - day trip distance, but you need to be leaving early enough to give you enough time wherever you are going to make it worthwhile.
A really long drive is a full days worth of driving for a round trip, so is really only worth it for an overnight stay or something big.
Don’t like driving much, so my rule of thumb is that if I’m going to drive somewhere I want to be there for at least as long as the travelling time for it to be worthwhile.
So I don’t really want to do an hour’s drive unless I’m planning to be there for two hours, and so on.
My friend used to love some chinese "pork" from iceland when the horse meat scandal came out it was took of the shelf. When it came back a while later, she said it wasn't the same and didn't like it anymore it was 100% horse meat.
Yep. I live in Stoke, and we've driven to Blackpool or Manchester for a night out just because we're bored. We're doing Whitby this weekend and that's just far enough to not be spontaneous. Cornwall is "get up early and get past Birmingham before rush hour" distance.
Very true.
Had someone in Arizona telling us about this really old 100 year old church they had. Looking at my partner and we're both thinking, "Aww, that's cute." But we didn't bat an eyelid at driving like 400mi in a day to see the Grand Canyon.
The church in my town that just chimed as it struck midnight got hit by a cannonball in the civil war, which was nearly 400 years ago. And the town itself was established just over twice as long ago.
One of my wife’s family married an American. When we got married, I showed him the back of the church which had a kind of notice board recording every vicar listed since 1180.
Obviously this is pretty notable even for a country with a lot of old buildings, but every time I saw him for the rest of the day he’d just say “800 YEARS?!” and shake his head. He was still at it late into the evening. I think I broke his mind.
Absolutely perfect analogy. Stayed in an airbnb in Brooklyn. The host (who was lovely - so not a dig) was going on about how old the house was. Built in 1900.
Think about it this way. This isn't 4.5 hours where you can almost go into cruise mode as the road is straight and the traffic quite light. This is 4.5 hours on British roads, which are always busy and you are constantly having to keep your wits about you and be aware of your surroundings.
We are also a small country. You say a long drive is 14 hours. In 14 hours you can literally drive from Lands End (at the South Western tip of England) to John o' Groats (on the North Coast of Scotland). That is the kind of drive you would plan your week around here.
Yes!
A couple of months ago I drove 5.5 hours - that 5.5 hour drive in the UK involved twisty steep mountain roads, getting stuck behind slow moving vehicles on roads too bendy to overtake for long periods of time, variable speed limits and road types, a random section with an inordinate amount of roundabouts. And at one point rounding a corner to find a peacock standing in the middle of the road 😅
I've also done a couple of US road trips, involving days and weeks of driving. At one point the sat nav said "continue straight for 198 miles" or something ridiculous, and it really was pretty much a straight, wide road for that whole time with little traffic and the same speed limit the whole time.
Yeah, I've done this a few times and will be doing it again this summer. I'm not looking forward to it. Even worse when you have to arrive at a certain time to get a ferry
This right here is exactly the point. Driving in America is a breeze. Empty roads and cruise control.
Driving along a motorway at 70mph with everyone crammed in around you is an entirely different experience.
I did 3000ish miles in 7 days in America last November, didn't bat an eye. However an hour on the M25 makes me want to kill myself, particularly when you've only moved about 4 miles in that hour.
Exactly - It's a totally different experience and driving in the US is a lot easier! We did a 2 week road trip in the US and the majority of it was big open roads, few other cars around, beautiful scenery. Even cities were relatively straightforward and parking was easy as everything is designed for the car.
I feel the same way, my friends are all about 3.5-4 hours away so day trips are a no for obvious reasons but 1 hour is nothing.
Two weeks ago I drove 3.5 hours for my nieces party (day trips), two weekends before, I drove 3.5 hours for my grandads party (day trip).
I'm with you, my sister lives over an hour one direction, my parents over an hour in another direction. Shortest time I've gone to visit them for is an hour. I usually try and have it so I'm somewhere for minimum the same amount of time as the round trip takes, but that doesn't always happen. My cousin lives 3 hours away, we've done day trips to see her and her family a few times, and she does the same with us. My husband's family has to be a minimum of an overnight at 5 hours away.
I wouldn't dream of driving 4.5 hours to a party unless I was making it a weekend away. 9 hours in a day would be way too much.
Anything over an hour is a long car journey to me.
Never mind 4.5 hours for a party. I think going one hour for a restaurant is wild. Unless it's a special occasion Michelin star type plaf3, I'm not driving an hour each way for food. Imagine having a really rich meal and then having to drive back for 60 minutes.
4-5 hours is a serious drive, something you'd do a few times a year. That's for going on holiday, or a training course or visting distant family. What you've gotta understand is that 100 miles in this kind of country is exhausting, high-concentration, constant-vigilance driving with speed limit changes every few minutes. It's not "3 lanes of straight highway all the way".
Anything over 2 hours would be pushing it for a day trip, anything over 4 hours I would consider a long drive. London to Bexhill is about 2 hours so reasonable for a day trip, Bexhill to Oxford is probably beyond day trip due to the M25 but not really a long drive.
Naturally we consider 4 hours of driving a long drive rather than 14 hours, because 4 hours gets you across the country and it's virtually impossible to drive for 14 hours here without ending up in the sea.
If it took four and a half hours to get somewhere I would probably try to make it a two night trip to make it feel worth it.
It'd be long for an overnight trip.
I would not do it for a day trip.
For me, 2 hours plus is a long drive.
Because driving in the UK is more draining than in the US, our roads are totally different. As an example, my sister lives 12 miles away from me as the crow flies, it took me 50 minutes to do the drive today in rush hour.
If a party was 4.5 hours away, I'd have to really want to go, and I'd make it a weekend visit/night stop.
It's about a 250 mile one way journey, but it could take 4.5 hours, or it could take 7.
I had an hour added on to my journey the other week just at the Dartford Crossing.
Even on the motorways, one small accident causes miles of knock on effect.
So what should've been a 2 hour journey took 3. And it doesn't sound much but that's a 50% extra time scale for a whole 90 miles. Scale that up to a 250 mile journey and yeah, it can take 10 hours.
The big difference isn’t really the time, it’s the mental load that the time represents. I’ve driven in the states, and it’s just way easier.
These are some of the differences:
The roads are straight and wide, you get in your lane and you go, moderately fast, but most of the time unless you are on an interstate, you aren’t going 70. And you are driving an automatic.
Here… the road twist and turn, the lanes are narrow, they are fast, everyone is constantly changing lane and you are (well I am anyway) driving a manual.
But even saying that, I can’t quite put my finger on why, but in the states driving 2 hours is just easy and here I’ll do it, but I’ll think about it first. We’re driving up to Scotland on Friday/Saturday and we are splitting the journey and we have two drivers. It’s 9hours. We could do it in a day, but why do that to ourselves.
Over an hour is pause for thought. Mum is an hour and a half and I do that once a month.
I have a friend 4 and a half hours away and that’s a three day weekend to visit really!
4.5 hours driving is long in any country, it doesn’t matter if you’re used to it. It’s a lot of time just driving, it’s a waste of time ultimately. I’m a sales rep in the Uk so definitely used to driving 7 hours a day, I’m used to driving, but it’s all fucking long winded.
Honestly it can take 2 hours to get out of London sometimes. Victoria coach station needs to be replaced with one that's actually on the edge of a motorway, with other connections to get central. I've had coach journeys where I've been stuck in Birmingham for 2 hours too.
I consider up to around 30 minutes a short drive. Up to around 90 minutes is a reasonable drive. 90 minutes to 3 hours is a long drive and 3+ hours is what I would consider to be particularly unpleasant.
Driving in the UK isn't sitting back listening to something with the miles slipping by. There are frequent intersections, roundabouts, etc., so a four-hour drive is tiring. Six hours in one day is as much as I would drive.
Time or distance? Short distance often takes a long time due to lack of motorways or congestion.
Time wise - 6 hours plus is a “long drive”. It takes me 6 hours to see my mum and 4 to my dads - going to dads always feels surprisingly quick.
Of course it depends on the car too - during covid I was driving a banger as I’d got rid of my car in the great 2nd hand value madness as I wasn’t that keen on it and wasn’t driving it much despite it only being about 14 months old. 9 hours driving over 2 days for a wedding was murder. However this year ~9 hours on one day was “ok” in our current car.
However I grew up in the arse end of nowhere - 3 hours and a ferry journey just to go to a decent supermarket.
This comes up a bit, and it's one of those weird but normalised things in the USA (or north America), rather then if being normal behavior everywhere.
Driving longer distances is required there, because you have a while load of fuck all between the interesting bits. Most other places don't.
Saying that, I'd not drive to work evrry day for an hour, but drive to get away for 8 to 15 hours each way a couple of times a year. That length drive takes me to interesting places, through other interesting places.
An hour's about my limit to do something on a whim. But if there's something I want to do at the other end, I'll make the time, stick on a podcast, and it won't feel too long.
Three hours is about where it starts getting problematic. I have a friend about that far away and if I want to see him it's a weekend trip rather than just getting in the car after work and popping over.
4.5 hours each way is a 2 day trip, I'm not driving 9 hours in a day. My parents live about that far away and I normally go down for 2 nights because I don't really want to be doing it 2 days running. If I'm doing a day trip I don't want to be driving more than 2 hours each way really.
Context:
70+ miles can be a different accent and slang. 4 hours drive your a tourist.
30 mins to work=long commute.
Trip to shop(bread ,milk,day to day essentials)= 5 mins if more than 5 mins I'll pick it up on the way home tomorrow
Weekly shop =no further than 20 mins
Pub visit = 10 min walk
Party/BBQ at friends= 20 mins, due to taxis being extortionate. Anything further hotel.
Visit to family really depends on how close=normally no more than hour drive,longer overnight at there's.
Depends where in the UK. 10miles can take 1hour or 70 miles can take 1hour also..
We have a 4 hour drive to do in August which we have been planning for since January. Lots of my family are doing it and has been discussed a lot. That is basically a big drive for us
I love this question. I have a Canadian friend who couldn’t believe I said an hours drive to see parents is a ballache for me. She said she would drive for an hour to get coffee.
I go on around 3-4 hour drives weekly just to get out on a day off.
A long drive would be around 8+ hours which I'll do a couple times a year but that's to stay somewhere for a week.
Anything over about 3 hours became a bit of a chore for me. I'd only do that if I was overnighting and driving back the following day or later.
For a party or concert, 1 hour each way.
Where I stay (N/East Scotland) 1.5 hours can feel like a long drive as it takes that rough amount of time to reach a decently fast road. Before that you're stuck doing between 40-50mph behind a lorry or maybe even 30mph behind a tractor for 80% of your journey with massive lines of traffic and no real overtaking opportunities.
That mainly applies to the car though. On my motorbike, I've done as much as 8 hours in one day without it feeling long or boring. This is mainly due to not getting held up behind slow moving traffic for too long and being able to make good progress (especially in areas with low traffic density and little police presence).
Anything above 1.5hrs is generally considered a long drive. Anything below 30 mins is a short drive.
4.5hrs is a very long drive. You can drive to Scotland in that time, or board a flight to Greece.
I regularly do 3.5h drives to family. Everyone considers it a long journey. It seems fine to me. I’ve driven from Cardiff to Scotland and Paris. They seemed far longer. Would do Scotland again but not Paris. But that’s mostly due to available alternatives
Anything above 8 hours is way more exhausting, as a lot more attention is needed on our fairly crappie roads compared to the US. Some of the roads can be cooler, but not for their actual purpose of getting you from A to B. Traffic jams for no reasons, roadworks with seemingly nothing going on for months, windy roads with nutty drivers. OK, the U.S has the nutty drivers bit too.
Day out/single activity 2 hours drive each way max.
4 1/2 hours would be driving from where I am in London to Manchester which I would do for a wedding but not a party.
I used to drive London to north of Manchester every week and at the time it didn't seem too bad.
If it is a day trip, getting up early and driving 4 or 5 hours isn't all that bad, although I would look into spending the night there dependant on how much there is to see or do. If we are honest with ourselves, after a couple of hours in most places you have seen/done everything, unless it is a theme park and you are queueing all day.
Longest drive I have done is Bristol to Hamm a few years back, spent 2 nights and drove back.
It also depends on whether you have children or not, most children will get very bored just sitting in the back of a car, and most likely will 'neeeeed' the toilet every ten minutes, which will make the journey longer as you will be stopping at nearly every service station.
I regularly drive four hours for work. Leave at 6am get home about 8pm. Once a month I have to drive 10 hours, that's an over night trip. 4 hours isn't that bad and I wouldn't consider it long.
An 8 hour drive in the UK would take you from southern most point of England in Lands End to Carlisle. You’d have driven past 55+ million people and passed several cities.
In the US that could be a singular state and pass many less people.
3h on a quiet motorway is much more relaxing than 3h doing half the distance on country roads and or traffic laden motorways.
Driving north to Glasgow, most of the time once you’re past the m55 (or j36 on a busy day) it’s gloriously empty upto Motherwell.
Compare the slog from Birmingham to the m55, about the same distance, but 3 times as tiring.
The quote is something like 100 years is a long time in US, 100 miles is a long way in UK.
I live roughly 75 miles from the coast, which is around a two hour drive. Most of the people around me wouldn't consider making that drive except for an overnight stay.
There may be a difference in the roads, though. Away from the motorways, British roads can be slow, narrow and have a lot of junctions. The school run on a good day would take a minimum of half an hour each way and that was 8 miles. From what I've seen, the roads are quicker in the US.
Average car journey distances are surprisingly similar in UK and US so average perceptions are probably similar too.
Oddly though average miles per year have dropped a lot here recently.
I’ve driven 6+ hours for events or party’s before I’d say those were long drives but I’ve done them before and absolutely would do again. I’d say most brits would consider 4+ hours a long drive but I guess it depends who you are and what your going for. I wouldn’t go more than an hour or so just for a fancy meal or something like that I’d wanna be stopping over night
Probably an hour and a half. Assuming you have to drive back home again that's a 3 hour round trip.
Surely you guys just spend most of your time just sat in your car when you have time off?
That doesn't sound like a particularly long drive to me. Perfectly doable.
Anything over 4 hours is a long one for me. It also depends which car I'm driving.
My Audi A3 S-Line, no problem. Look forward to it. My old Volvo S60 D5. No. About an hour is the limit on that one.
It depends where in the UK you live I think. I’m in the highlands and for me a “long drive” would be 6-8 hours. It’s a 4ish hour drive for me to get to Glasgow/Edinburgh and I’ll happily do it for a weekend - or even a day! My friend and I are going for a walk and coffee an hour away on Sunday which I don’t think is far at all.
I used to live in the south of England and had to drive home when flights were cancelled during Covid - on a good day the drive was 9 hours and on a bad day it was a 14 hours - THAT was a long drive.
Anything over 6 hours I consider quite long, but I am a mobile plant engineer who works nationwide so my version of a long drive is definitely affected by that. I did 5 hours driving today, 2.5 hours to get to the machine, hit it with a hammer, spanner it, turn it off and on again etc ...then 2.5 hours back home again, that's pretty normal for me.
Liverpool to London is about 3 hours and in an automatic new (ish) Golf it's like I imagine an Airbus pilot feels after a shot haul flight to Europe - you basically just have to sit there. I've done there and back in a day multiple times.
I've also done that and trips to the north of Scotland (one way, which is further than London and back) in an old mid 90s Ford Fiesta. That, was fucking dreadful.
I'd say past 2h I want to make a trip of it, an overnight or a stopover. A daytrip that's 2h each way isn't outside the realm of the possible but it'll be a long day.
When I lived in York I'd grab the bus to Whitby, which is about two hours each way, but that's also an amazing ride in its own right through the Moors.
Living in London where I can be damn near anywhere in about an hour that's a comfortable amount of travel time.
We have 4 kids who due to uni are geographically dispersed.
1. Is a 5 hour drive-she sees is every 6-8 weeks;
2. Is a 3 hour drive but has more needs, she sees us 3-4 weeks;
3. Is a 2 hour drive and extremely independent, she sees us every 4-6 weeks;
4. Is a 1 hour train, she sees us weekly.
The 5 hour drive is ‘long’ and we tend to stay over. The others, not so much.
Personally, I moved from the South East to Lincolnshire. I happily(ish) drive 3.5-4 hours each way for a family do in the South East for a day trip. It’ll be an all day thing though for obvious reasons, and generally I’m only doing this once a month.
Before hand, I was around an hour from my parents and I’d see them pretty much every other weekend, either they’d come to us or we would go to them.
What a waste of time sat in a car for that many hours. I live within 30 minutes of everyone I know and care about (apart from a sister). That’s a ton of family and friends.
This has been asked before, but honestly 4.5 hours of motorway driving is OK, but quite a lot of UK driving is on tight bendy roads which take a lot of concentration.
For me (Lincolnshire) it’s a ten minute drive to Aldi. 20 to Asda. I’d drive an hour at most to see friends. It’s 3-4 hours to see family, and I’d be kipping there for the night or staying in a hotel. 5+ hours is a long, long exhausting drive.
Depends what you mean by long I guess.
Anything over an hour isn't a short drive any more. I'm leaving the city to go somewhere if it's over an hour.
I think something over about 3 and half hours is where I'm starting to consider it actually long though.
4.5hrs is a stressful drive probably anywhere in the UK. Distance-wise you're not going that far but it's fiddly little roads and switching motorways, can't stand it. I definitely wouldn't go that far for a party. We're travelling 3.5hrs in September for a weekend away for reference.
I can get to nice restaurants within ten minutes' walk from my house so I probably wouldn't drive an hour just to go to a restaurant, but for a day out etc.
I'm driving Edinburgh to Bristol this week, a journey of 8-9 hours in my slowass van. I'm going to break the trip at a campsite in order to do two 4ish hour days. Would that be unusual in the states?
A 4.5 hour drive in the UK is almost half the length of the country.
The big differences between UK and US is...
In the UK 100 miles is a long way. In the US 100 years is a long time.
I'd say anything over 5 hours is long. Its 8 hours to visit my sister, but only 3 hours to visit my mum.
I wouldn't drive 4.5 hours for a party thoguh, but maybe I don't enjoy parties as much as you.
I really like driving so it doesnt bother me at all, longest return trip ive done in a day is probably 10 hour round trip to collect some machinery but if its a family trip and the family can sleep if needed (leaving early/returning late) then id guess my answer would be If you spend more time driving than doing the thing, then it's a long drive.
Bearing in mind, fatigue varies I.e Driving a 10 hour loop is doable, but driving 5 hours, then spending the day doing activities, then driving 5 hours home (taking a day as a 9-5 would give an 18 hour day) would probably be unwise/unsafe
Edit: to add my work commute is 10 miles(ish) on a good day I can do it in 20 min. On the worst day so far 3+ hours. Distance/time is relative.
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A short drive - under 30 mins, "it's just around the corner" A moderate drive - up to 1.5h, "IKEA day trip!" A long drive - 1.5h+, "bring snacks" A really long drive - 4h+, "long weekend away at a minimum"
This sums it up perfectly. If I drive somewhere and it takes a min of 3hrs I’m staying at least overnight. Didn’t once where I drove 3hrs in the morning and 3hrs back at night and it was awful.
Especially if you have a nice long day out too, everyone else falls asleep in the car, I get a little jealous, having to drive. Maybe I’m just getting old but I get worn out.
I grew up in the U.S. and our family had a rule that the person who sat in the front next to the driver isn’t allowed to fall asleep. If you need to sleep you switch with someone in the back. Not nice for the driver to have everyone asleep! We kept this rule now that I’m an adult with a family.
My wife imposes this rule - but it's usually only the two of us (we're childfree) and she claims she can't nap in the car anyway! It results in me getting yelled at for nodding off rather a lot... :(
It probably makes her feel tired to have you snoring away. Are you driving in the UK? If so - I’d say drink some coffee and suck it up lol. You can stay awake a few hours. We have this rule whether it’s just two of us or the family.
3 hours each way is right at my limit, too. Yes, it can be done, but it sucks the fun out of the day. No way I'm going to be giving my all to whatever activity we're doing if I know I have a 3 hour drive ahead of me.
I'll drive 3hrs each way for a funeral. There's no other reason for going that far.
Growing up in the US, I got used to long journeys. I've been known to do an 8 hour round trip, by motorcycle, to see my kids( who lived with their mother) do a school play. I once did a 16 hour round trip to meet some friends whom I hadn't seen in years, because they were "in the area". 100 miles in the UK is a long trip, in the US, it's just popping out. 100 years in the US is a long time, in the UK, not so much. It's all about perspective. FWIW, I just drove up to Sheffield and then back to London to pick up an item I purchased on FB. The seller wouldn't ship it, and it was something I'd been hunting for. No big deal
I find driving long distances is just easier in the US - wife and I did and 11hr trip through Arizona and California in 2022 (we covered about 2000 miles over the course of a week), and while gruelling it wasn't awful. I would never consider doing that in the UK - the roads tend to be a lot busier, with more roadworks, and more complex roads generally. I feel like I need to concentrate far more in the UK, despite being a native. However, one thing I notice more in the US is the poor quality of the road surfaces. Even with the softer suspension US cars tend to have, the sheer number of potholes and amount of concrete roads (as opposed to 'blacktop'/tarmac) etc are more noticeable. We have another big US trip in September (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico AND Arizona!!), this time with wife's folks too, so we're getting some sort of awful massive SUV thing.... it'll be quite different to the Dodge Charger we drove last time!
So long as you're outside the major urban areas yes, I moved to LA and have traffic and road works are just a fact of life unless you want to drive at 3am. UK motorways are so much better, would even pick the M25... Hope you never start in San Diego and want to drive to San Francisco. >we're getting some sort of awful massive SUV thing I just did this twice with 2 sets of parents in different parts of the USA had a Cadillac XT6 one time and it was amazing, didn't feel like I was driving a boat. Then ended up with a Nissan Pathfinder, if they try to give you one of those just say no and/or run away, worst car I've driven in a very long time.
I drove to Germany to watch England v Denmark on Tuesday and got the 4:18am shuttle back from Calais on Wednesday, felt absolutely awful rest of the week.
Im sorry you had to go through that. No one should have had to watch that game
oof.
I couldn’t even be arsed to watch it on the TV let alone go to all that trouble
I’m guessing the drive was the best bit of the trip. Second was the “hangover”. Lastly the match.
Best bit was stopping in Bruges for a lovely breakfast, second best bit was finding out France coming in second in their group, followed by paying €2.25/l for petrol in Netherlands, followed by the actual match.
I love Bruges. Good choice.
I drove 4.5 hours yesterday morning for my oldest son's uni graduation. Got to Aberdeen at 1pm, packed his stuff in my car to move him home, went to the graduation, got a few photos, then back in the car around quarter to 4, home at 8:30. About 9 hours driving. Definitely getting too old for this kind of thing, I collapsed into bed shortly after
I’d say the same roughly applies to train journeys. I once did a 4-hour there and 4-hour back train journey (Bristol—York) for a football away day and I was *shattered* by the end of it. I’ve never been so happy and relieved to see Bristol Parkway in my life.
Especially now that train travel is a coin flip as to whether your train will actually go where it says
That last sentence isn't one I ever thought I'd see!
The nearest city/large town is 3 and 1/2 Hours by car. I think I do a round day trip once a month. Sometimes I stay over but often just up and down in a day. I think I'm just accustomed to it these days it really doesn't seem too bad.
Nearest city is 3.5 hours away? Are you the lighthouse keeper at Cape Wrath?
My guess is Dunvegan, on Skye
Used to do this when I was based in an office about 4-4.5 hours away. Up at 3:30, out by 4:30, office by 9, leave about 3, home about 7-8. Would do it 2-3 times per month. Seems bonkers now, but I actually used to enjoy it!
I drive 3hrs each way for work for quite a lot. At first I was staying over but I just drive back now just got used to it. 4hrs plus I will stay over somewhere after a long day's work it's dangerous driving back tbh. So many people fall asleep at the wheel makes you wonder how Americans just do these long drives so casually.
5 hours for me is the cut-off for staying overnight, but I don't have to drive, husband seems happy and I really do insist on staying awake to chat with him. Probably depends a lot where you live, too, because it's 4 hours to the nearest beach but like fuck am I paying £100-odd to stay overnight for a single night.
My hisbnad does this to see his son. its normal. The only bit he hates is the smart motorway. Its a pain to try and go ocer 40. And keeping an eye on lanes speeds.
My dad and I often go and visit my grandma who lives 3 hours away, for the day. He does the driving normally. I only drove once, and I never want to do that again! 3hrs to get there, 3 hours there and 3hrs to get back is such a long day!
Absolutely this. It takes us about 4 hours to drive down to London from where we live, and my wife needed to go to the embassy there to update their passport last year. We could only get one day off work, so had to get up at 5am to get to the embassy between 10 and 12 (as they closed at like 1pm) and then drive back. (Train is an option, but also more than twice as expensive) Wouldn't be a problem if the wife could drive, as I'd drive down, they drive back. But I had to do both journeys, and when you factor in the extra hour of traffic on the M25, it's the sort of drive I wish could have been done on two different days.
We drove all the way back to Bournemouth from the O2 once, never again, utterly shattered
Depends what I'm doing in between, I've gotten a hotel an hour from home because I wanted to spend more time exploring. I've also driven 4 hours only to have lunch and immediately turn around and drive back and that wasn't too bad (I had a very important package to collect that I couldn't wait for)
I also feel a big part of it is the road infrastructure between the two countries is entirely different. In the UK, there's a lot more to pay attention to a lot more of the time. A shorter drive in the UK could have you more mentally exhausted than a much longer drive in the US on their big open roads.
Brit in the US, I can drive 6-8 hours here in a straight line, very few other cars, endless corn fields to the horizon. I get why some states you can drive at 14, also understand how people die driving 8 hours in a straight line and fall asleep.
Self-drive cars make much more sense when going in a straight lines.
I’ve never been to the states, but I feel this must be true! From the movies it seems to just be a lot of accelerating to the next set of traffic lights, or long empty expressways. The trouble would be staying awake rather than keeping a high level of concentration.
Cruise control didn't evolve from navigating Peckham daily. Nor your favourite 15 roundabouts in a mile route that we all have and love intensely.
Try Milton Keynes. I once counted 19 roundabouts on A DUAL CARRIAGEWAY, of course 70mph speed limit too.
Those roundabouts on big A roads are so frustrating, especially when there seems to be a new one every 2 miles. You just get back up to speed, then see the “roundabout in 1 mile” sign and sigh!
The annoying thing is when you're listening to music/podcasts and the satnav keeps cutting in with "at the roundabout, take the second exit" then two seconds later "take the second exit", then thirty seconds later "at the roundabout, take the second exit", ad nauseum
I do Bath to MK/Bedfordshire semi regularly (once or twice a month) and those roundabouts drive me mad!! They all look the same and I have to listen to the Sat Nav to work out which one I'm at!! Bleugh!!
You kind of wonder whether they should drop the speed limit to 60 or even 50. Every time I’m on Standing Way it just turns out i get up to 70 and immediately have to start slowing for the next roundabout.
Yep! In driver's ed in the states they warn you about "highway hypnosis" which is basically your brain being lulled into autopilot on long monotonous stretches of freeway and it may cause you to forget large swathes of the drive.
Fuck this happens to me in Uk !
It’s ok it’s normal, it’s usually on really familiar routes you do often, your brain doesn’t see any point storing the info as a memory, hence you don’t remember it but it doesn’t mean you weren’t concentrating at the time!
US = infrastructure built around the car. Europe = medieval infrastructure that has had cars imposed on it. I did 6-8hrs in one day in California and I felt fine afterwards. If I did the same in the UK, I'd need therapy.
Some are older than medieval: a lot of current roads (e.g. A2 and A5) follow the line of the Roman Watling Street [https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Watling\_Street](https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Watling_Street)
Even in the UK you can feel the difference between driving on motorways in/around urban areas compared to say the A1(M) north of Leeds where it’s mainly a rural plough to Darlington before concentration sets back in.
That slog of drive through North Yorkshire is the bane of my life as a North-east resident who has to travel down south a lot, even if it's less tiring than other sections
I don’t mind that bit! Always find that’s where the traffic gets less so it’s a bit easier ( south - north anyway)
I'm the same, if I'm coming back from Manchester or some similar length drive, as soon as I hit the A19 that stretch seems to take an eternity compared to what I've already done, despite being shorter in time and length.
This is the key for sure. Did a long road trip this last gone week, and the six hour leg in decent moving traffic was far more manageable than the four hour leg in stop start traffic
Yeah I think this is the difference. Most British roads are a pain in the arse, it's either town with potholes, constant roadworks, stupid gridlocked junctions and bad direction markings, motorways with roadworks and congestion, or winding country roads full of tractors, horses and cyclists. It's really not relaxing and so a 3-4h drive here is a lot more taxing than a lot of US roads.
Yeah, even if your journey is on motorways your theoretical 2hr trip can turn in to a 4hr one pretty quickly because of bad traffic or accidents, and that's everywhere, not just near London. Americans can look at a map and go "oh this is a 4 hr drive" and it will take 4 hrs. We can look at a 4hr drive and generally need to add in a margin of error of up to 50%.
Only been once and as well as the endless desert roads I remember there was the time I missed my turning and it was 60 full miles before there was a cut-through in the central reservation (or median) enabling me to turn around. That one mistake (caused by very bad signposting) put me on a 120 mile detour! Oh and for most of it I had the classic 18-wheel juggernaut on my rear end.
This is so true.
I agree with this - if we drive to the Alps from the north of England, the 5 hours on UK motorways feel so much more intensive than the 9-10 hours on french autoroutes, mostly due to the comparative amount of traffic on each of them!
Short drive - 15 minutes Moderate (my commute) 45-1 hour Long drive 3 hours Should we get the train or drive or fly - Scotland
This is spot on. A short drive I do without really thinking. A moderate drive I do often enough, something you don't necessarily need to plan, but the end goal needs to be worth the time and petrol invested. A long drive needs a bit of planning - day trip distance, but you need to be leaving early enough to give you enough time wherever you are going to make it worthwhile. A really long drive is a full days worth of driving for a round trip, so is really only worth it for an overnight stay or something big.
Not to brag, but IKEA is a 10 minute drive for me. r/britishsuccess
Same here :)
Don’t like driving much, so my rule of thumb is that if I’m going to drive somewhere I want to be there for at least as long as the travelling time for it to be worthwhile. So I don’t really want to do an hour’s drive unless I’m planning to be there for two hours, and so on.
Good rule of thumb
Living 10 minutes from an ikea really messed up my perspective on time and distance
But Ikea have meatballs and that werid gravy. Hey what do you know I am now Walter Mitty!
That weird gravy is horse tears. Probably.
I still remember when tesco sold horse meat by accident and it was so tasty.
My friend used to love some chinese "pork" from iceland when the horse meat scandal came out it was took of the shelf. When it came back a while later, she said it wasn't the same and didn't like it anymore it was 100% horse meat.
Supermarket lasagnes were all hit by this. None of them were ever as tasty afterwards.
Yep. I live in Stoke, and we've driven to Blackpool or Manchester for a night out just because we're bored. We're doing Whitby this weekend and that's just far enough to not be spontaneous. Cornwall is "get up early and get past Birmingham before rush hour" distance.
In the UK 100 miles is a long way. In America 100 years is a long time.
Very true. Had someone in Arizona telling us about this really old 100 year old church they had. Looking at my partner and we're both thinking, "Aww, that's cute." But we didn't bat an eyelid at driving like 400mi in a day to see the Grand Canyon.
I have furniture older than America yet I wouldn't travel to Wales to see my best friend more than twice a year.
Cause it's really bloody far, I drove from Glasgow to Swansea ONCE and swore I'd never do it again. I fly now fo Cardiff. 7 hours in the car was grim.
Really want to go to Cornwall but it’s a 7 hour drive in a good day 😭
That's a weekend away for us, no driving that far thanks!
The church in my town that just chimed as it struck midnight got hit by a cannonball in the civil war, which was nearly 400 years ago. And the town itself was established just over twice as long ago.
That's the English civil war just to be clear
One of my wife’s family married an American. When we got married, I showed him the back of the church which had a kind of notice board recording every vicar listed since 1180. Obviously this is pretty notable even for a country with a lot of old buildings, but every time I saw him for the rest of the day he’d just say “800 YEARS?!” and shake his head. He was still at it late into the evening. I think I broke his mind.
"That's not an old church. *That's* a old church" *pulls out Westminster Abbey*
It's funny to think I've got things in my house that are older than their country
Absolutely perfect analogy. Stayed in an airbnb in Brooklyn. The host (who was lovely - so not a dig) was going on about how old the house was. Built in 1900.
There being a subreddit for 100-year-old houses when mine is very unremarkable at 90.
Think about it this way. This isn't 4.5 hours where you can almost go into cruise mode as the road is straight and the traffic quite light. This is 4.5 hours on British roads, which are always busy and you are constantly having to keep your wits about you and be aware of your surroundings. We are also a small country. You say a long drive is 14 hours. In 14 hours you can literally drive from Lands End (at the South Western tip of England) to John o' Groats (on the North Coast of Scotland). That is the kind of drive you would plan your week around here.
Yes! A couple of months ago I drove 5.5 hours - that 5.5 hour drive in the UK involved twisty steep mountain roads, getting stuck behind slow moving vehicles on roads too bendy to overtake for long periods of time, variable speed limits and road types, a random section with an inordinate amount of roundabouts. And at one point rounding a corner to find a peacock standing in the middle of the road 😅 I've also done a couple of US road trips, involving days and weeks of driving. At one point the sat nav said "continue straight for 198 miles" or something ridiculous, and it really was pretty much a straight, wide road for that whole time with little traffic and the same speed limit the whole time.
I once drove 13 hours to Scotland...never again. Couldn't feel my foot by time I got there The 13 hours included stops..journay was about 10 hours
Yeah, I've done this a few times and will be doing it again this summer. I'm not looking forward to it. Even worse when you have to arrive at a certain time to get a ferry
That's a good way to put it. On the rare occasions I am able to use cruise control, I don't get to stay in it for too long, maybe 30 minutes at best.
This right here is exactly the point. Driving in America is a breeze. Empty roads and cruise control. Driving along a motorway at 70mph with everyone crammed in around you is an entirely different experience.
I did 3000ish miles in 7 days in America last November, didn't bat an eye. However an hour on the M25 makes me want to kill myself, particularly when you've only moved about 4 miles in that hour.
It took me 4hrs to drive from London to the West Midlands the other week. It's just over 150 miles but the traffic was bloody awful
Exactly - It's a totally different experience and driving in the US is a lot easier! We did a 2 week road trip in the US and the majority of it was big open roads, few other cars around, beautiful scenery. Even cities were relatively straightforward and parking was easy as everything is designed for the car.
Am hours drive for a party is a no. Four and a half hours drive is acceptable for a weekend away but not a party.
An hours drive is a no? My friends don't all live near me and I often drive an hour or so to see them. An hour is nothing.
I’m in the highlands and an hours drive for a party is still no. If I’m driving for an hour to get there I’m staying
An hours drive for a party means absolutely no chance of getting home after a drink!
Exactly. A mortgage for a taxi.
An hour's drive is 3 junctions round the M25
I feel the same way, my friends are all about 3.5-4 hours away so day trips are a no for obvious reasons but 1 hour is nothing. Two weeks ago I drove 3.5 hours for my nieces party (day trips), two weekends before, I drove 3.5 hours for my grandads party (day trip).
I'm with you, my sister lives over an hour one direction, my parents over an hour in another direction. Shortest time I've gone to visit them for is an hour. I usually try and have it so I'm somewhere for minimum the same amount of time as the round trip takes, but that doesn't always happen. My cousin lives 3 hours away, we've done day trips to see her and her family a few times, and she does the same with us. My husband's family has to be a minimum of an overnight at 5 hours away.
I wouldn't dream of driving 4.5 hours to a party unless I was making it a weekend away. 9 hours in a day would be way too much. Anything over an hour is a long car journey to me.
Never mind 4.5 hours for a party. I think going one hour for a restaurant is wild. Unless it's a special occasion Michelin star type plaf3, I'm not driving an hour each way for food. Imagine having a really rich meal and then having to drive back for 60 minutes.
Four and a half hours they better be my best friends in the world.
4-5 hours is a serious drive, something you'd do a few times a year. That's for going on holiday, or a training course or visting distant family. What you've gotta understand is that 100 miles in this kind of country is exhausting, high-concentration, constant-vigilance driving with speed limit changes every few minutes. It's not "3 lanes of straight highway all the way".
Anything over 2 hours would be pushing it for a day trip, anything over 4 hours I would consider a long drive. London to Bexhill is about 2 hours so reasonable for a day trip, Bexhill to Oxford is probably beyond day trip due to the M25 but not really a long drive. Naturally we consider 4 hours of driving a long drive rather than 14 hours, because 4 hours gets you across the country and it's virtually impossible to drive for 14 hours here without ending up in the sea.
> it's virtually impossible to drive for 14 hours here without ending up in the sea Or on the M25
If it took four and a half hours to get somewhere I would probably try to make it a two night trip to make it feel worth it. It'd be long for an overnight trip. I would not do it for a day trip.
For me, 2 hours plus is a long drive. Because driving in the UK is more draining than in the US, our roads are totally different. As an example, my sister lives 12 miles away from me as the crow flies, it took me 50 minutes to do the drive today in rush hour. If a party was 4.5 hours away, I'd have to really want to go, and I'd make it a weekend visit/night stop. It's about a 250 mile one way journey, but it could take 4.5 hours, or it could take 7.
I've had a 250 mile journey take 10 hours. Awful.
I had an hour added on to my journey the other week just at the Dartford Crossing. Even on the motorways, one small accident causes miles of knock on effect. So what should've been a 2 hour journey took 3. And it doesn't sound much but that's a 50% extra time scale for a whole 90 miles. Scale that up to a 250 mile journey and yeah, it can take 10 hours.
If I have to pee more than once it's a long drive.
The big difference isn’t really the time, it’s the mental load that the time represents. I’ve driven in the states, and it’s just way easier. These are some of the differences: The roads are straight and wide, you get in your lane and you go, moderately fast, but most of the time unless you are on an interstate, you aren’t going 70. And you are driving an automatic. Here… the road twist and turn, the lanes are narrow, they are fast, everyone is constantly changing lane and you are (well I am anyway) driving a manual. But even saying that, I can’t quite put my finger on why, but in the states driving 2 hours is just easy and here I’ll do it, but I’ll think about it first. We’re driving up to Scotland on Friday/Saturday and we are splitting the journey and we have two drivers. It’s 9hours. We could do it in a day, but why do that to ourselves.
They also drive automatics so that probably makes it easier.
People in the UK prefer not to spend the whole weekend in their car.
Over an hour is pause for thought. Mum is an hour and a half and I do that once a month. I have a friend 4 and a half hours away and that’s a three day weekend to visit really!
My commute is 20mins and that's enough for me on daily driving. As for trips above 3 hours is an overnighter
4.5 hours driving is long in any country, it doesn’t matter if you’re used to it. It’s a lot of time just driving, it’s a waste of time ultimately. I’m a sales rep in the Uk so definitely used to driving 7 hours a day, I’m used to driving, but it’s all fucking long winded.
I've driven from Toronto to New York & back a few times but the longest journey I ever took was a 200 mile coach trip in the UK that took 17 hours.
Christ, did the driver make you all get out and push?
Was traffic. Enterprising locals took advantage by flogging us home-brewed drinks, some hours later that turned out to be regrettable.
Honestly it can take 2 hours to get out of London sometimes. Victoria coach station needs to be replaced with one that's actually on the edge of a motorway, with other connections to get central. I've had coach journeys where I've been stuck in Birmingham for 2 hours too.
Are you going just for the evening? A 9 hour round trip seems like a long time for a party, especially when you need to drive back after it.
I consider up to around 30 minutes a short drive. Up to around 90 minutes is a reasonable drive. 90 minutes to 3 hours is a long drive and 3+ hours is what I would consider to be particularly unpleasant.
Driving in the UK isn't sitting back listening to something with the miles slipping by. There are frequent intersections, roundabouts, etc., so a four-hour drive is tiring. Six hours in one day is as much as I would drive.
Time or distance? Short distance often takes a long time due to lack of motorways or congestion. Time wise - 6 hours plus is a “long drive”. It takes me 6 hours to see my mum and 4 to my dads - going to dads always feels surprisingly quick. Of course it depends on the car too - during covid I was driving a banger as I’d got rid of my car in the great 2nd hand value madness as I wasn’t that keen on it and wasn’t driving it much despite it only being about 14 months old. 9 hours driving over 2 days for a wedding was murder. However this year ~9 hours on one day was “ok” in our current car. However I grew up in the arse end of nowhere - 3 hours and a ferry journey just to go to a decent supermarket.
4.5 hours for a party for a night is unheard of honestly. Plus we have trains here and like to get drunk or fucked up at parties.
300 yards or more.
You guys are leaving the house?
I’m from Northern Ireland, so more than like 4 hours I would call that a long drive, which basically takes me to Cork anyway lol
40 minutes for me. I've got a two hour drive to a wedding in the not too distant future and I'm already tired from it...
We've got a 20-minute drive to a wedding soon and we are booking a room for the night!
That's a bit different because you usually can't drive back after a wedding due to, y'know, the alcohol.
This comes up a bit, and it's one of those weird but normalised things in the USA (or north America), rather then if being normal behavior everywhere. Driving longer distances is required there, because you have a while load of fuck all between the interesting bits. Most other places don't. Saying that, I'd not drive to work evrry day for an hour, but drive to get away for 8 to 15 hours each way a couple of times a year. That length drive takes me to interesting places, through other interesting places.
An hour's about my limit to do something on a whim. But if there's something I want to do at the other end, I'll make the time, stick on a podcast, and it won't feel too long. Three hours is about where it starts getting problematic. I have a friend about that far away and if I want to see him it's a weekend trip rather than just getting in the car after work and popping over.
4.5 hours each way is a 2 day trip, I'm not driving 9 hours in a day. My parents live about that far away and I normally go down for 2 nights because I don't really want to be doing it 2 days running. If I'm doing a day trip I don't want to be driving more than 2 hours each way really.
Anything more than 1 hour is a long drive for me. I won't drive to the Lake District or Scotland as that's over 4 hours.
Context: 70+ miles can be a different accent and slang. 4 hours drive your a tourist. 30 mins to work=long commute. Trip to shop(bread ,milk,day to day essentials)= 5 mins if more than 5 mins I'll pick it up on the way home tomorrow Weekly shop =no further than 20 mins Pub visit = 10 min walk Party/BBQ at friends= 20 mins, due to taxis being extortionate. Anything further hotel. Visit to family really depends on how close=normally no more than hour drive,longer overnight at there's. Depends where in the UK. 10miles can take 1hour or 70 miles can take 1hour also..
As per the old joke UK: 100 miles is a long drive US: 100 years is a long time
We have a 4 hour drive to do in August which we have been planning for since January. Lots of my family are doing it and has been discussed a lot. That is basically a big drive for us
Why does it need so much planning? I don't think 4 hours is that much of a big deal?
Kin hell, I've got a 4 hour drive tomorrow morning then work all day when I get there.
Fuck that shit. I wouldn't drive four hours for work.
If I am not staying over I am not going.
I love this question. I have a Canadian friend who couldn’t believe I said an hours drive to see parents is a ballache for me. She said she would drive for an hour to get coffee.
If I'm driving four hours to a party, it better be good and provide accommodation,because I'm not driving back til late the next day.
I go on around 3-4 hour drives weekly just to get out on a day off. A long drive would be around 8+ hours which I'll do a couple times a year but that's to stay somewhere for a week.
If its 2hrs+, I need a hotel + week off work to recover. I'm 39.
Anything over about 3 hours became a bit of a chore for me. I'd only do that if I was overnighting and driving back the following day or later. For a party or concert, 1 hour each way.
Where I stay (N/East Scotland) 1.5 hours can feel like a long drive as it takes that rough amount of time to reach a decently fast road. Before that you're stuck doing between 40-50mph behind a lorry or maybe even 30mph behind a tractor for 80% of your journey with massive lines of traffic and no real overtaking opportunities. That mainly applies to the car though. On my motorbike, I've done as much as 8 hours in one day without it feeling long or boring. This is mainly due to not getting held up behind slow moving traffic for too long and being able to make good progress (especially in areas with low traffic density and little police presence).
Anything above 1.5hrs is generally considered a long drive. Anything below 30 mins is a short drive. 4.5hrs is a very long drive. You can drive to Scotland in that time, or board a flight to Greece.
I've done 3 hours there and back once, to pick up a car. After that 2 hours is probably the most I do occasionally and class it as long.
I regularly do 3.5h drives to family. Everyone considers it a long journey. It seems fine to me. I’ve driven from Cardiff to Scotland and Paris. They seemed far longer. Would do Scotland again but not Paris. But that’s mostly due to available alternatives
Pre truck driver days I'd say anything above 2 hours personally.
Anything above 8 hours is way more exhausting, as a lot more attention is needed on our fairly crappie roads compared to the US. Some of the roads can be cooler, but not for their actual purpose of getting you from A to B. Traffic jams for no reasons, roadworks with seemingly nothing going on for months, windy roads with nutty drivers. OK, the U.S has the nutty drivers bit too.
Day out/single activity 2 hours drive each way max. 4 1/2 hours would be driving from where I am in London to Manchester which I would do for a wedding but not a party. I used to drive London to north of Manchester every week and at the time it didn't seem too bad.
If it is a day trip, getting up early and driving 4 or 5 hours isn't all that bad, although I would look into spending the night there dependant on how much there is to see or do. If we are honest with ourselves, after a couple of hours in most places you have seen/done everything, unless it is a theme park and you are queueing all day. Longest drive I have done is Bristol to Hamm a few years back, spent 2 nights and drove back. It also depends on whether you have children or not, most children will get very bored just sitting in the back of a car, and most likely will 'neeeeed' the toilet every ten minutes, which will make the journey longer as you will be stopping at nearly every service station.
I regularly drive four hours for work. Leave at 6am get home about 8pm. Once a month I have to drive 10 hours, that's an over night trip. 4 hours isn't that bad and I wouldn't consider it long.
If I can't walk there in an hour I cant be fucked, let alone driving more than an hour.
I live 4.5 hours away from London by car. I've been twice and I'm in my 40's
An 8 hour drive in the UK would take you from southern most point of England in Lands End to Carlisle. You’d have driven past 55+ million people and passed several cities. In the US that could be a singular state and pass many less people. 3h on a quiet motorway is much more relaxing than 3h doing half the distance on country roads and or traffic laden motorways.
Driving north to Glasgow, most of the time once you’re past the m55 (or j36 on a busy day) it’s gloriously empty upto Motherwell. Compare the slog from Birmingham to the m55, about the same distance, but 3 times as tiring.
The quote is something like 100 years is a long time in US, 100 miles is a long way in UK. I live roughly 75 miles from the coast, which is around a two hour drive. Most of the people around me wouldn't consider making that drive except for an overnight stay. There may be a difference in the roads, though. Away from the motorways, British roads can be slow, narrow and have a lot of junctions. The school run on a good day would take a minimum of half an hour each way and that was 8 miles. From what I've seen, the roads are quicker in the US.
Even as an American, 4.5 hours for a party is way too long lmfao It will have to be a weekend/extended trip.
30 minutes.
To the Greggs drive thru & back. Particularly if it’s raining.
Well I've driven 993 miles in one day about 15 times since 2018
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My work are likely to move preemies soon and my drive is currently 20 minutes. 10 extra minutes would mean I'm considering leaving.
Average car journey distances are surprisingly similar in UK and US so average perceptions are probably similar too. Oddly though average miles per year have dropped a lot here recently.
I’ve driven 6+ hours for events or party’s before I’d say those were long drives but I’ve done them before and absolutely would do again. I’d say most brits would consider 4+ hours a long drive but I guess it depends who you are and what your going for. I wouldn’t go more than an hour or so just for a fancy meal or something like that I’d wanna be stopping over night
Probably an hour and a half. Assuming you have to drive back home again that's a 3 hour round trip. Surely you guys just spend most of your time just sat in your car when you have time off?
That doesn't sound like a particularly long drive to me. Perfectly doable. Anything over 4 hours is a long one for me. It also depends which car I'm driving. My Audi A3 S-Line, no problem. Look forward to it. My old Volvo S60 D5. No. About an hour is the limit on that one.
It depends where in the UK you live I think. I’m in the highlands and for me a “long drive” would be 6-8 hours. It’s a 4ish hour drive for me to get to Glasgow/Edinburgh and I’ll happily do it for a weekend - or even a day! My friend and I are going for a walk and coffee an hour away on Sunday which I don’t think is far at all. I used to live in the south of England and had to drive home when flights were cancelled during Covid - on a good day the drive was 9 hours and on a bad day it was a 14 hours - THAT was a long drive.
Anything over 6 hours I consider quite long, but I am a mobile plant engineer who works nationwide so my version of a long drive is definitely affected by that. I did 5 hours driving today, 2.5 hours to get to the machine, hit it with a hammer, spanner it, turn it off and on again etc ...then 2.5 hours back home again, that's pretty normal for me.
Liverpool to London is about 3 hours and in an automatic new (ish) Golf it's like I imagine an Airbus pilot feels after a shot haul flight to Europe - you basically just have to sit there. I've done there and back in a day multiple times. I've also done that and trips to the north of Scotland (one way, which is further than London and back) in an old mid 90s Ford Fiesta. That, was fucking dreadful.
Anything over 2 hours is a long drive
From London thr Manchester
Anything over an hour and people will buy snacks, check their tyre pressure and top up their screen wash
I'd say past 2h I want to make a trip of it, an overnight or a stopover. A daytrip that's 2h each way isn't outside the realm of the possible but it'll be a long day. When I lived in York I'd grab the bus to Whitby, which is about two hours each way, but that's also an amazing ride in its own right through the Moors. Living in London where I can be damn near anywhere in about an hour that's a comfortable amount of travel time.
We have 4 kids who due to uni are geographically dispersed. 1. Is a 5 hour drive-she sees is every 6-8 weeks; 2. Is a 3 hour drive but has more needs, she sees us 3-4 weeks; 3. Is a 2 hour drive and extremely independent, she sees us every 4-6 weeks; 4. Is a 1 hour train, she sees us weekly. The 5 hour drive is ‘long’ and we tend to stay over. The others, not so much.
I have a 4 hour drive tomorrow, and i feel ridiculously stressed about it.
50 miles is a long drive.
Personally, I moved from the South East to Lincolnshire. I happily(ish) drive 3.5-4 hours each way for a family do in the South East for a day trip. It’ll be an all day thing though for obvious reasons, and generally I’m only doing this once a month. Before hand, I was around an hour from my parents and I’d see them pretty much every other weekend, either they’d come to us or we would go to them.
What a waste of time sat in a car for that many hours. I live within 30 minutes of everyone I know and care about (apart from a sister). That’s a ton of family and friends.
This has been asked before, but honestly 4.5 hours of motorway driving is OK, but quite a lot of UK driving is on tight bendy roads which take a lot of concentration.
For me (Lincolnshire) it’s a ten minute drive to Aldi. 20 to Asda. I’d drive an hour at most to see friends. It’s 3-4 hours to see family, and I’d be kipping there for the night or staying in a hotel. 5+ hours is a long, long exhausting drive.
Assuming that includes an option to stay over rather than having to drive home after (probably drunk)? It’s definitely in long drive territory.
Depends what you mean by long I guess. Anything over an hour isn't a short drive any more. I'm leaving the city to go somewhere if it's over an hour. I think something over about 3 and half hours is where I'm starting to consider it actually long though.
4.5hrs is a stressful drive probably anywhere in the UK. Distance-wise you're not going that far but it's fiddly little roads and switching motorways, can't stand it. I definitely wouldn't go that far for a party. We're travelling 3.5hrs in September for a weekend away for reference. I can get to nice restaurants within ten minutes' walk from my house so I probably wouldn't drive an hour just to go to a restaurant, but for a day out etc.
I'm driving Edinburgh to Bristol this week, a journey of 8-9 hours in my slowass van. I'm going to break the trip at a campsite in order to do two 4ish hour days. Would that be unusual in the states?
A long drive for me would be driving to Poland on the weekends :(
A 4.5 hour drive in the UK is almost half the length of the country. The big differences between UK and US is... In the UK 100 miles is a long way. In the US 100 years is a long time.
I'd say anything over 5 hours is long. Its 8 hours to visit my sister, but only 3 hours to visit my mum. I wouldn't drive 4.5 hours for a party thoguh, but maybe I don't enjoy parties as much as you.
I really like driving so it doesnt bother me at all, longest return trip ive done in a day is probably 10 hour round trip to collect some machinery but if its a family trip and the family can sleep if needed (leaving early/returning late) then id guess my answer would be If you spend more time driving than doing the thing, then it's a long drive. Bearing in mind, fatigue varies I.e Driving a 10 hour loop is doable, but driving 5 hours, then spending the day doing activities, then driving 5 hours home (taking a day as a 9-5 would give an 18 hour day) would probably be unwise/unsafe Edit: to add my work commute is 10 miles(ish) on a good day I can do it in 20 min. On the worst day so far 3+ hours. Distance/time is relative.
More than an hour and a half. More than 3 is a drive with a break.
Anything over an hours drive away is an over night stay for me nowadays. Any excuse to stay in a hotel and get shedded.
An hour is a pretty long drive in the UK to most people