I began to see what an ass I had been to steal the car.

The big green brute would be the safest kind of clue to me over the breadth of Scotland.

If I left it and took to my feet, it would be discovered in an hour or two and I would get no start in the race.
The immediate thing to do was to get to the loneliest roads.

These I soon found when I struck up a tributary of the big river, and got into a glen with steep hills all about me, and a corkscrew road at the end which climbed over a pass.

Here I met nobody, but it was taking me too far north, so I slewed east along a bad track and finally struck a big double-line railway.