My wife and I are going to be visiting bits of England and Scotland for a couple weeks starting about the end of May (by rental car). She has spent most of the dreary days of this past winter planning and re-planning our itinerary. It's nailed down to the point where we know, and have booked, where we will be spending each night. A question she asked me today had be stumped once I started to think about it.
Some background... When we do a road trip from home (Vancouver area of British Columbia, Canada) we frequently have only a very few routes to choose from to get from home to the various parts of Western North America we've visited. This includes traveling by major highways, minor highways, local roads, and in some cases barely passable dirt tracks and logging (mountainous!) roads. This is easily summed up by: much space, few areas of population, lots of impediments (mountains often).
On the other hand, it appears from glancing at the various maps we have, that to get from many places in the U.K. to other places there are often a multitude of route choices if one chooses to avoid the major motorways.
So, without knowing all the details of what lies along the various possible routes, how does one go about choosing possible routes?
(some guidelines... we're not interested in making the fastest possible times, nor do we need to see every little back country track. It's not always about the destination, often it's the "getting there" that's most interesting.)
If any of you fine folks over there have any suggestions on how you choose routes when you go "for a drive" I'd love to hear them.
(I will only be bringing my F3 with a couple of lenses and a bunch of Acros. Tripod of course too.)
When I drive to Wales from Southend (an east to west drive) I choose 'A' roads (A40 A41). The reasons being they go through some beautiful parts of the country which you would not see on a Motorway. Also because I have to think about driving (many junctions, traffic lights, villages, towns etc to negotiate), which keeps me alert, unlike Motorway driving where it is easy to become mesmerised and lose concentration..
Difficult one. I use motorways when I am in a place that has them if I am in a hurry. Otherwise, I try to drive as little as possible. It is very easy to spend a lot of time sitting in a car and a traffic jams [of which there are many] and see much less than spending more time at fewer places.
For scenic drives, 'A' roads with little or no dual carriageway and numbers with as many figures as possible are your best bet. Thus 'A1' is bad; 'A272' good. The good ones are often red instead of green on standard UK motoring atlases.
These are the roads that pass through rather than round the old market towns. They are the ones that pass over medieval viaducts and bridges, and under great tunnels of old oaks and intense green beeches. Odd little roadside caffs, quirky shopping opportunities and mad random detours from the nominal compass heading are further delights. They make for 'motoring', not driving.
For example, if you look at the border area between England and Scotland you'll see the A1 barrelling up the east coast, and the M6 up the west. Both are reasonably fast roads in May, but both are landscaped so that you mostly can't gawp at the scenery even if you are driving slowly enough to do so. They do have rest stops and laybys (pulloffs), but they are not usually the sorts of places where tourists want to get out a camera. Getting out of A1 laybys is an excercise in precisely applied agression and timing.
Between the two trunk routes lies a web of snaking minor A's which could fill a lifetime of tourism and photography. If you're going north-south, the A68 is a great way to feel you've actually crossed a border, and the A697 takes you through a whole series of great little unknown towns. For real thrills though you should cross the border diagonally from (or to :-) Moffat-Galashiels-Melrose-Kelso-Coldstream-Berwick. Just a glance in a local tourist guide for possible stops along the way and you'll run out of film before you've made it halfway across.
And that's just the Borders. *All* of the UK is like this. The only way to stay sane is not to try and see it all in one week.
A quick classification lesson may be in order... Roads beginning with:
M: (M1, M40, M62 etc) Motorways. Dual-carriageways - mostly 3 lanes in each direction but inclined to reduce to two lanes in less well-trodden areas - speed limit (theoretically ) 70MPH.
A: (A1, A40, etc) A-Roads. Major roads between towns. Generally, the smaller the number (A1, A2, A3 etc) the more "major" it is - the A234 for example may be no bigger than a typical "B" road where the A1 is little short of a motorway near large towns on its route. Usually wide single-carriageway but often becoming dual-carrigeway in and approaching large towns and on busy routes not covered by a motorway. Things change in more rural areas: in North Wales or the Lake District for example they may become 4 metres wide with a sheer drop on one side (with guard-rail) and a rock-face on the other... So, quite variable in practice.
B: (B52, B189, B3056 etc) your typical back-road used to join up the bits the A-roads miss out: smaller villages etc. In rural areas, inclined to drop down to just enough room for one car with passing places at intervals.
So, if in a rural area, I'd suggest you pick an A-road. B-roads tend to meander a bit so it can be difficult to keep track of where you are, or indeed which direction you are going in... Satnav comes in very handy!
In general, if going from A to B and not in a hurry, I'd just pick out a couple of stops on the way from a tourist guide and use whatever A and B roads get me there.
Roads are all paved - no dirt roads etc, even the sub-B roads so no worries there. They are often narrow in rural areas though. Smaller A and B roads were often originally cart tracks between villages and the surrounding field systems - then someone came along, shovelled tarmac over it and called it a road...
Thanks a lot folks. Spurred on by some of the comments, I've been surfing to find such sites as SABRE's road list, the RAC route planner and even a site on the A361. Wow, I had no idea there was a system to this (appropriate adjective here) web of roads, nor how much information was available for so many of them.
I do thank you for the comments, especially for the primer by Struan and Bob.
My wife is busy with her road atlas and laptop, I'm on the GPS software and we're both making some headway in sorting this out. (It really is too bad that we are, once again, likely trying to see too much in too short a time. A hard habit to break; we both grew up in families where two weeks in the summer was of the "get in the car and go as far as you can before you have to turn back to be at work on Monday". Both the kids have it too...)
Well thats a difficult question because we have no idea of distances involved.
If you tried to drive from London to Scotland on B roads it would take at least two days. Generally B roads are country roads which can be winding and slow especially if you get stuck behind a bus. B also usually have hedges either side and you can drive for miles without being able to see anything if you are in a small (low) car. On the other hand they will lead you through the "quaint" little villages that tourists love.
Some A roads can be dull as dishwater whereas others can be really full of great landscape views. The A303 which goes from South west of london down to Devon is great road which drives right by Stonehenge. Some A roads are only marginally bigger than B roads.
Best policy is to visit the following website and use the route planner which will give you detailed routes with road numbers and times etc.
request sat nav with your hire car and then set it up to avoid main roads. Driving on back roads can be fun , but you may well be faced with a junction every mile or so which can get a real pain for the map reader.
I try to do what Andy does and use 'A' roads and ignore the motorways for the same reasons he gives. I wouldn't drive from London to Scotland (if that is your intention). I would fly to Scotland then hire a car up there (but that's just me).
Enjoy your trip.
If you do decide to drive up the North East coast, then the 'Northumberland Costal Route' is the way to go, as long as you aren't in a hurry. It's about 100 miles long, but goes past all (IMHO) the best looking castles. It could take quite a while to drive along it, if you keep stopping for a look around
Which route in U.K....? 
) 70MPH.
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