Salisbury

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Friday – The Startling Truth

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Last night I travelled to Salisbury to interview the wonderfully charismatic scientist, Dame Wendy Hall.  Her team invented an internet system that pre-dated the web and we sat in her garden chatting until dusk. Waving goodbye, I squeezed past her Jaguar XF and started up the 2008.

As I looked back over my shoulder, I was startled to discover the roof ‘wave’ decoration cut into the headlining was illuminated brightly by LEDs in the dark! It’s quite the most bizarre design feature I’ve encountered in any car for years. Peugeot would call it a unique selling point but I would have preferred that part of my £17,245 to have been spent on a sat nav system instead.

Equally as startling but in a rather more appealing way was the fuel economy I achieved driving back from Salisbury. Car manufacturers make claims about fuel consumption that are impossible to match but without even trying I managed a quite incredible 68.8mpg!

This figure, of course, has now given me the incentive to go for my highest mpg ever – the magic 70mpg! I have driven on several fuel economy events in the past and been pleased with 50mpg but the 2008’s consumption was in normal conditions.

Which means I didn’t have to push the door mirrors in and take off the windscreen wipers to improve aerodynamics – or remove the seats to reduce weight!

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Sunday – The Dog’s Do Das

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I don’t think I’ve ever driven a car as small as the Fiat 500. That’s small on the outside because inside, it seems to stretch to accomodate all you can throw at it. The back seats would certainly take two toddlers, or a couple of young teenagers.

Jessica and I managed to pack weekend bags, coats and assorted wet eather gear into the boot easily. Our backseat was a more than comfortable platform for a large, brown Vizsla who accompanied us to the Pembroke Arms in Wilton, near Salisbury.

Fitting Malin into an assortment of cars can be a test of nerve and ingenuity. I feared the worst with the 500 but he seems happier in it than most cars.

It’s either because he can sit upright with plenty of headroom, or because he read the blurb for the Pembroke Arms, which provided him with a dog bed, his own canine menu (steak, saugages – can you believe it!) and some biscuit treats as part of the deal.

You have to accept a few idiosyncracies with the Fiat interior. It’s tricky to find the slot for the safety belt, the white steering wheel and headrests are going to get grubby pretty quickly and the 500 really should have steering columns controls for the music system.

But I still sit very comfortably on the wide fabric seats and there’s a tremendous ambience about the cabin. If colour, form and function affect your driving mood, you really need to try a Colour Therapy.