Park and Ride

The drive described in this book is "a nice day out" around suburban Britain; not the Britain that is green and pleasant, urban and dangerous, historic and scenic, but the rest of it - the vast swathes of in-betweeny land, the multiplexed, motorwayed, mind-your-manners, Great British Experience.

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In the journey described in this book, Miranda Sawyer drives from Croydon to Swindon via Stevenage, Harrogate and Cadbury World in Birmingham, on "a nice day out" around suburban Britain. This is the Britain of motorways and heritage centres, of campaigning housewives and executive housing estates, of boy racers and Essex girls, of Cheshire wives and Scottish golfers. Readers are taken for an evening at a prestigious hotel night-club, a day in Britain's "most average town", a trip round Romford's bourgeois drug addicts, a date with The Lighthouse Family, a few hours with Staffordshire's jet-set, a hen night, a car cruise, a swingers' special evening, and a lovely Sunday drive to see the new B&Q on the bypass. This is not the Britain that is green and pleasant, urban and dangerous, historic and scenic; this is the rest of it, the vast swathes of in-betweeny land, the multiplexed, motorwayed, mind-your-manners, Great British Experience.