Rants of a disgruntled motorist

So as I approach my final week at HIBT / Navitas, I can't help but feel relieved that, very soon, I will never, ever have to trek the A1M rush-hour again. Hooray! My journey of just 19 miles usually takes me about an hour and a half (each way - that's 3 hours travelling per day), and most of it is spent watching brainless nitwits push and shove each other out of the way as they completely fail to realise that it's the pushing and shoving that's causing the traffic jam in the first place.

So from now on I'll be living just half a mile from my work place, which means I can sell the car and enjoy the luxury of walking to work (in the rain, no doubt) and the benefits of not spending all my money on fuel, tax and insurance.

Speaking of fuel, as UK prices have hit an average of £1.03 per litre (up from approx. £0.79 this time last year), I decided to follow car ponce Jeremy Clarkson's example in Top Gear (Season 4, Episode 4) and see just how much I can save on petrol. By checking the tyre pressure, emptying the copious quantities of crap out of the boot, and driving carefully, I managed to cut my fuel bill from just over £30/week to just under £20/week travelling the same route.

To do this I basically had to drive like an old granny, keeping the RPM as low as possible (I set an upper limit of 2500 RPM which in 5th gear gets me to just over 50 mph), accelerating as slowly as possible (just using the clutch) and paying extra attention to the road ahead to avoid slowing down unless absolutely necessary.

This is a change from approx. 29 MPG to approx 45 MPG. Yowza!

Update: for those of you who may be interested, the car I based this on is a 2000/2001 (X Reg) Peugeot 306 1.8 Meridian petrol