The Armin Grewe Homepage
Well, and this is where it ends. Some of you might have heard about the "fuel crisis" in the UK in mid September 2000. For those of you who don't here's a summary and my view on the story:

The UK has fairly high taxes on petrol, at time of writing this probably the highest in Europe. Encouraged by the protests in France, truck drivers and farmers in the UK decided to do something as well: They started blockades (although they claim it they were only protesting peacefully, but I beg to differ) of fuel depots and refineries. And the oil companies didn't seem to be exactly unhappy about what was happening. Say what you want, but if I don't hear any evidence that the oil companies really couldn't get any tankers out and were trying all they could I have my suspicions... What that meant was that within a very short period of time petrol stations all over the UK started to run dry.

Picture of two newspapers with front page coverage of the fuel crisis Picture of two newspapers with front page coverage of the fuel crisis
Picture of a fuel gauge showing a full tankPicture of a fuel gauge showing a tank just over half fullWhat did this mean for me? With the situation extremely unclear and news about especially England "running dry" I was getting nervous not being able to return home at the weekend. I had a full tank and knew it would just get me home from where I was. So I decided to cancel the remaining days and return to Swindon earlier. Not an easy decision but at the time probably the right decision. So I left and drove home past the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond and through several slow moving convoys, arriving back home in Swindon late in the evening.
Picture of the shore of a loch (lake) Picture of a stationary traffic jam on the motorway
And that's really it now. I hope you enjoyed my little travel report, may be you will also visit some of the places I visited. If you have any feedback please send me an email.

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