Mileage

Gordon wrote the other day about the mileage he covers to commute, and the cost of fuel (among other things) and it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while (by which I mean ‘way before he wrote about it’) but never really got round to putting into words. So here goes for another attempt.

At the moment, I’m commuting between home and Great Yarmouth for the current contract. It’s about 40 miles each way, so about 400 miles per week. That’s about a tank of fuel per week – and wow, do you notice how much the price of fuel has gone up in the last year. Hell, in the last three months.

Remember all the fuss and fuel blockades when the price of petrol first went over the £1 per litre mark? (The BBC story linked to there is from 2000 – I thought it was a lot more recent than that, but what would I know?) Well now it’s nudging £1.20 per litre, and no-one seems to be protesting or complaining at all. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?

When we moved up to Norfolk, one of the main aims was to be able to live a greener, more ecological/economical life. And in general we’ve managed it. In fact, the biggest part of my carbon footprint now is my annual mileage. The problem is that as we live in the back-end of nowhere, I have to travel to offices in places where the work is. It’s a fact of life – at least until I get my own business properly started, and can work from home. Then it’ll start working out for the better. But until then, I’m just going to have to keep on eating up the miles.

God knows, I’d rather not have to be doing this kind of mileage. But at the moment, I do have to, short of completely changing my employment, career, and salary expectations.