If you mention in the pub that you intend to drive from, say, Surrey to Cornwall, a distance that most Americans would happily go to get a taco, your companions will puff their cheeks, look knowingly at each other, and blow out air as if to say, 'Well, now that's a bit of a tall order,' and then they'll launch into a lively and protracted discussion of whether it's better to take the A30 to Stockbridge and then the A303 to Ilchester or the A361 to Glastonbury via Shepton Mallet. Within minutes the conversation will plunge off into a level of detail that leaves you, as a foreigner, swivelling your head in quiet wonderment.

 'You know that layby outside Warminster, the one with the grit box with the broken handle?' one of them will say. 'You know, just past the turnoff for Little Puking but before the B6029 miniroundabout. By the dead sycamore.'

 At this point, you find you are the only person in the group not nodding vigorously.

 'Well, about a quarter of a mile past there, not the first left turning, but the second one, there's a lane between two hedgerows they're mostly hawthorn but with a little hazel mixed in. Well, if you follow that road past the reservoir and under the railway bridge, and take a sharp right at the Buggered Ploughman '

 'Nice little pub,' somebody will interject usually, for some reason, a guy in a bulky cardigan. 'They do a decent pint of Old Toejam.'

 'and follow the dirt track through the army firing range and round the back of the cement works, it drops down onto the B3689 Ram's Dropping bypass. It saves a good three or four minutes and cuts out the rail crossing at Great Shagging.'

 'Unless, of course, you're coming from Crewkerne,' someone else will add eagerly. 'Now, if you're coming from Crewkerne. ..'