Slow road to China

My wife returned this morning from ten days visiting relatives in the USA. While she was away I undertook several longish drives through the Scottish countryside.

On Saturday 9th my route was:

Edinburgh - Peebles - Moffat - Dumfries - Thornhill - Biggar - Edinburgh.

The next day I made the following journey:

Edinburgh - Glasgow - Glasgow Airport - Gourock - Largs - Troon - Prestwick - Ayr - Edinburgh.

Yesterday's trip was:

Edinburgh - Stirling - Crieff - Lochearnhead - Killin - Aberfeldy - Crieff - Gleneagles - Dunfermline - Edinburgh.

I'd never been to the Loch Tay area before and it's certainly somewhere for a repeat visit. Quite a few foreign registered cars were noticed, as is often the case in the more scenic parts of Scotland. However, I didn't see any evidence of this sort of thing:

TENS of thousands of Chinese tourists are travelling to Germany to drive powerful cars at up to 150mph on the autobahns, despite fears by road safety groups that the trend will end in disaster.

Inside lanes, hard shoulders and traffic lights are rare in rural Perthshire. Perhaps that's just as well:

Chinese drivers, who have one of the worst road safety records in the world, have been spotted overtaking on inside lanes and reversing up hard shoulders when they miss their exits. Venturing on to ordinary roads for overnight stops, they often ignore traffic lights

The German travel industry doesn't see too much of a problem:

“Sometimes there are teething problems, like the Chinese not understanding that they are not permitted to stop on a roundabout, or pulling on to the hard shoulder to make tea and let the children run around, but nothing serious.”

I spotted a Chinese restaurant in Crieff but that's not quite the same thing unless their food is exceedingly fast.

In my younger days I did speed along the autobahns on the odd occasion but I now prefer to meander along Scotland's more tranquil roads. The scenery's better too.

(Update: On the way home I was close to the wonderfully named village of Crook of Devon. Apparently, someone once added this graffiti to the village sign: Twinned with Thief of Baghdad.)