Car games for long journeys

[David Mann]

When my kids were small we used to try to keep them amused on long journeys by playing observation games. They were too young for "car cricket" so we used to get them to count Shell stations vs Esso, that kind of thing. Anyway, on a long and boring trip to Scotland in January I decided to see how long it would take me to spot vehicles with old style reg plates from "Y" to "A" in reverse order (Y123 ABC etc). Y,X,W, no problem, I thought the rest would take a couple of hours, max. I finally finished TODAY, 4 months later. Conclusions:


It was a pretty sad thing to do
I'm not paying enough attention while drivingDoes anyone else have any favourite ways of passing long journeys?

[DaveR]

Some years ago, my mum (who doesn't drive!) started to collect the numbers of old-style number plates consecutively. For example, starting at X1 ABC, then T2 YHS, C3 PLM etc. Only 999 numbers to get, easy job. I think she did this every time she got in the car for about 3 months and only got about as far as 110.

So, this is either harder than you think it will be, or she is just not observant enough!! :)

[Sopha]

Me and my brother when we were younger used to wave at people through the back window and we had an objective like to see if we could get like 40 waves back we could get back and stuff it was pretty stupid but we were young and it was fun at the time hehe! .. we also do the yellow car no return thingy, even though there are like alot of them around now (oh well) hehe. :clap:

[barrytone]

We used to play arms and legs, not sure if that's the correct name but it kept us well occupied on long journeys, won't work on motorways though. Draw lots to see who goes first, then next pub you see you count the "arms and legs". Say the pub name was The Red Lion, that counts as four because a lion has four legs; if the pub name was The Sycamore, you'd score zero because a tree doesn't have arms or legs.

Second player gets the next pub and so on, need an impartial observer to keep score and adjudicate on disputes. One journey we regularly made involved passing a pub called The Fox and Hounds, we used to try to cheat so it was our turn when we got there, whoever got this pub effectively won but as we were near our destination, it hardly mattered, good fun anyway!

[David Mann]

.. we also do the yellow car no return thingy, :clap:
What is that???

[bigmamabadger]

Another old favourite of ours was "how much noise can we make before Daddy slams the brakes on and shouts at us, and can we get him to nearly skid into a tree like last time?":oops:
I think the arms and legs games is also known as cricket.
BMB
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[sonja]

we used to play a game with the number plates where you take the three letters together eg. GTU and make up the strangest or funniest sentance with words beginning with those letters for example - Gary Twirls Umberellas etc etc!

[geordiecolin]

What is that???

The rules are, I believe the person who notices a passing yellow car first gets to lamp the other person who then is NOT entitled to return the punch.

I knew this game as "Mini Punch No Return" and involved minis as opposed to yellow cars.

[Stan Van Der Lager]

When I'm driving a long journey I like to play the games on my mobile phone. Crazy golf especially. When I get bored of those I always find a game of solitare on the dashboard passes time. Although when you drift onto the rumble strip it sometimes shakes the cards all over the place and picking them up from the foot well is quite dangerous.

[bigmamabadger]

When I'm driving a long journey I like to play the games on my mobile phone. Crazy golf especially. When I get bored of those I always find a game of solitare on the dashboard passes time. Although when you drift onto the rumble strip it sometimes shakes the cards all over the place and picking them up from the foot well is quite dangerous.
Know what you mean. It's a right pain when you've got a joker stuck under your clutch. You need one of those table things fixed to the steering wheel.
BMB
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