Last Sunday we drove out to Littleferry, leaving the car by the Littleferry-Golspie road while we walked through the forestry to the beach. Then, yesterday, our second daughter and I took it in to Inverness and sold it to WeBuyAnyCar for a price which I consider to have been very reasonable - and slightly more than we had expected. We returned home in a very enjoyable two-hour journey by train.
I have no intention of buying another car. I'm over eighty, I am well aware that my reactions are slowing, and I've been feeling increasingly nervous on roads like the busy A9. It's high time to stop, particularly as I can walk away from driving in the knowledge that I have never had an accident, and never claimed on our insurance policy. I wish I could feel optimistic about it but we now have to learn how to get by in a world that is increasingly dependent on the motor car.
I have owned, along with Mrs MW, a total of sixteen cars, starting with my Land Rover in which a friend and I travelled into the Sahara as far as Colomb Bechar, and ending with our last car, sold yesterday, a very different VW Polo 1.4 automatic. In between, we've owned a Morris 1000, a VW Beetle, a Morris 1200 and an Austin 1300GT, a Morris Marina - the worst car I ever bought - two Minis, a Triumph Toledo, two Ford Escort estates, a Volvo 240 estate, a VW Transporter, a Freelander, a Hyundai i10, and the VW Polo.
I enjoyed driving almost all of them, the main exception being the Marina, but feel no nostalgia for the open road.
The older you get, the braver that decision seems Jon, as we all seem to want the freedom car ownership offers. But it's the right decision and I wish more older people would take it too. There seems to be a lack of courtesy now and roads are, of course, so much busier. I'm a few years behind you, and realising my perception of driving is as much due to my age as actual conditions. Happy to say, these days I'm more and more something of a "Twirly".
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