We brought a car. *hangs head in shame*

We just brought a car. Really didn't mean to, but it just sort of happened. We went to the show room for a quick check of the details and ended up walking out having ordered a car which is currently on a ship heading to port in Southampton. I had hired a car for the week, a Toyota Aygo from Enterprise Histon and it was fine, a nice tiny car which did well to nip us round the flat lands and briefly to the mountains of Milton Keynes. It was also the car that took us to the showroom.
What have we done? It seems a little like we've failed and a little like we've succeeded at the same time. There has been some pride in not having a car, doing everything by bicycle until now, with a 5 month old (having had him on the bike trailer). But increasingly we have been relying on friends with cars to get us around more easily, and hiring more frequently. So it does feel like this is perhaps the natural time to relent and join the motorised masses. And in this way it oddly feels like a new age is dawning, like the 70's all over again (not that I was there the first time round), the prospect of having our own family car, the freedom to drive around and go where we like. Most importantly the ability to escape the oppressive confines of flat Cambridgeshire. Unfortunately, I fear we could discover that East Anglia is even more remote than we realised, taking at least an hour to get anywhere worth going.
The one positive thing living as we do in a village on the outskirts of Cambridge, is that driving in and around Cam is akin to having your brain repeadtedly smashed by a brick. It is a frightful "city" to attempt by car. Utterly ghastly. So this will mean that despite being motorised, any need for Cam will be bike bike bike. (It's worth noting, that even finding a place to park your bike can be difficult, but that is an entirely positive problem for a place to have.)
Just to be clear I do love our little village of Histon and I do like Cambridge, but I don't like driving round it and I'm not keen on the county it's in; too far right. Oh for the hills (and rain?) of the West.
2015-09-04