成人快手

Urban driving has a certain stigma for those used to driving in the country. Too much traffic, too many roads, traffic lights, motorways - the list is endless. Driving in the country, they say, is far easier.

I'm not so sure.

In October, driving up overnight from Glasgow, I encountered one of the uniquely rural driving hazards - a deer. As I came over the road from Invergarry to Cluanie, there were loads of them about. Being painfully aware of them, and driving exceptionally carefully, I still managed to hit one. It jumped down from the 'high' side of the road just as I came to the same piece of road and I had no chance to avoid it. Fortunately for me, there was no damage to the car, and there was no sign of the deer, so I assume there was no damage to it either. I was like a cat on a hot tin roof as I finished the rest of the drive, and was doing ridiculous things like driving in the centre of the road as much as I could before I realised that if I'd been in the centre of the road when the deer appeared it would probably have come in the windscreen on top of me. My confidence was really shot.

Some of the locals told me about a whistle you could get for the car at our local garage that 'repelled' deer. I wasn't sure if they were winding me up or not, but I went and asked anyway. "Oh yeah," the guy said, "but we don't have any in stock just now." I wasn't sure if he was being serious, or in on the wind-up. Later in the month, when some deer repelling whistles appeared in the garage, I figured he was being serious, and decided that they would be well worth the 拢7 investment when I got paid at the end of November.

I was reminded of this yesterday as I was reading about a driver who was killed by a deer that the car in front of him had hit. It came through the windscreen of his car, and he didn't have a chance.

And so we come to today.

I had to go to Inverness for a conference. I left Skye just before 7, when it was still night-time dark. The weather was atrocious. The road by Lochcarron is very like the Invergarry/Cluanie road, but worse. It twists and turns more, has more ups and downs, the trees are closer to the road and it is single track for a lot of the time. I was really nervous as I drove over it, but once I got down the hill, I started to feel better. As the weather eased, and the daylight came I felt even more relieved. Once I turned on to the nice, new bit of road I figured I was home free. "That's the bad bit over" I thought to myself.

As I'm sure you can guess, that's when it happened.

A deer appeared on the road right in front of me - I'm not sure if it jumped up from the ditch or down from the hill, but there was no chance of avoiding it. I hit it pretty hard, and it smashed the windscreen on the passenger side, damaged my front wing and door and destroyed the wing mirror. The rear wing got damaged as well.

My pay doesn't go in till tomorrow. I should have bought a deer whistle with a cheque.

I pulled over, and with the help of some passing firemen, got the deer corpse off the road. I was totally scunnered by what had happened, but I suppose I should count my blessings. Thinking of the newspaper report from earlier this week, things could have turned out a lot worse.

Give me urban driving any time.

To cap it all, when I got to the hotel, the conference had been cancelled.