Miles or kilometres?

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

marknotgeorge

Hol den Vorschlaghammer!
Location
Derby.
You can't just leave it there!
Okay, I'll move it exactly 0.9144 metres.
 

Feastie

Über Member
Location
Leeds
Kilometres.

Miles, yard, feet, stone - so confusing. At school they don't teach that stuff any more, you learn everything in cm, metres, km, kg and g. Then you leave school to be perplexed by the measures on signs in every day life. One day the signs will catch up and I'll know what's going on. One day...

You can probably tell how old somebody is just by asking them to orientate 300 yards. To me, 300 is a big number and should be a long way, but somehow a yard is a tiny piddly distance and... oh I have no idea. Didn't even know lb stood for pound, always imagined there was a mysterious "lib/lub" measure until faaarrr too recently.
 
Last edited:

rebelpeter

Well-Known Member
I'm British so in Britain I use miles. when abroad and see road sign in Km I have to convert to miles to work out how far places are :whistle:.
Well this is the exact response i was going to post, its bee mph for the last million
Being born and bred in this ere Island, I just cannot mentally picture kilometres. Someone tells me something is a mile away, I know exactly how far it will take me. Km? No chance. Very pleased when I found the unit changer on the phone app :smile:

Quite right its been mph all my long life why change it, they have changed everything else lets keep mph british even if they insist of changing everything else, feet an inches has gone lbs and ounces gone for chris sake leave us one thing thats british.....

Mod Edit: Bold removed
 
Last edited by a moderator:

mustang1

Legendary Member
Location
London, UK
Why do runners in this country use kilometres then?:blink:
They are forward thinking, not like old fashioned lethargic we don't-wanna-change Brits.

BTW I use km, even in the car before it goes in for servicing I have to change the trip computer to miles so the muppets servicing the car don't over state my mileage.
 

marknotgeorge

Hol den Vorschlaghammer!
Location
Derby.
A mile's not exactly British - the yard has been legally defined as a fraction of a metre since the 60s, and a mile is just 1760 of those. But it doesn't really matter. As long as both parties of a transaction know what units are used, they can easily be converted worth a bit of simple maths.
A A
 

Dogtrousers

Kilometre nibbler
Not long after Euro was first launched, early 2000's, I was buying some Euros and I remember noticing that a Euro bought 0.621 Pounds ... which had a kind of spooky symmetry to it.

Didn't last though.
 
in Norfolk there is the "country mile" - which is much further than you would expect.

We got country miles down here too. Every time I leave the pub the country mile home seems to be a different length to what it was on the previous trip home from the pub.
 

SamR

Rider on the Lancastrian storm
Location
Lancashire
Most of the people I know use miles, but I want to use KMs, so it sounds like I've gone much further than I actually have! EG 50KM, or 30 miles? Which sounds better? 50, of course. It's a bigger number!
 

classic33

Leg End Member
Most of the people I know use miles, but I want to use KMs, so it sounds like I've gone much further than I actually have! EG 50KM, or 30 miles? Which sounds better? 50, of course. It's a bigger number!
Makes it sound as though you've further to go as well though!!
 
time is my preferred measure for how long a ride is. Is it reasonable to presume we're all OK with hours, minutes (& seconds if you want) are common units here? :whistle:
 
Top Bottom