Hot or Cold

DO you enjoy listening to travel stories? I do, especially when it helps me with my next destination. Recently, a friend who had returned from a short holiday in the UK was complaining about their plumbing fixtures. She said she could not understand why they had separate taps for hot and cold water without any mixer. In the freezing weather, she found the cold water too cold to use but when she turned on the hot water, it gradually became too hot for her to use as well and she was not able to mix it unless she filled up the sink with a combination from both taps! That element used to puzzle me too and the only explanation I could come up with was that these were probably older fixtures before there were mixers!