Sunday 22 January 2012

I'm going to drive around Britain...

For my holiday this year I am going to drive around Britain. Literally. Round the edge. And I'm going to do it using only A-roads. This is my blog about it, so welcome :)

(Before continuing, please note none of the Google Maps links in the Sabre thread work properly since the latest Google Maps update. Go Google!) This all started some months back when one of the posters over at SABRE posted this topic about circumnavigating the UK by car using only A-roads. Further down the page you will notice yours truly deciding to take up the challenge and cheerfully splitting the route up into 13 days of travel. That all took some time. Now all the links don't work. I did it all again with Bing maps, with the added advantage that they host OS maps, which I personally feel are more reliable for telling me what is and isn't an A-road. You may be surprised that whether a road is in fact classified as an A-road isn't always the easiest thing to work out. Then again you may not if you came here from Sabre.

I set myself some rules, they were thus:

1) As far as possible I will always stay on the A-road nearest the coast.
2) I will not double-back on myself, so A-roads that don't lead to other A-roads are out.
3) I will go clockwise. This is solely due to a mildly traumatic childhood experience when I directed the family car up Porlock Hill on the A39 in Devon. I shall be driving down it.
4) I will not use any ferries.

Nope, none of these.
© Copyright Robin Drayton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
However, I'm going to break the rules 3 times, because I can:

1) I'm going around Anglesey anticlockwise. A lot of islands are ruled out by rule 2, but Anglesey has two A-roads accessing it (the A5 and A55), but due to a lack of available slip roads onto the A55 Britannia Bridge I can only stick to rule 1 by going anticlockwise around Anglesey. Stare at a map of North Wales for a while if you wish to see what I mean...
2) It's a long way via Gloucester, so I shall use the M48 Severn Bridge. Nothing against Gloucester, but this journey is long enough as it is.
3) Gretna. You have probably never cared, and neither had I until recently, that you cannot get from the A6071 to the A75 at Gretna without using a B-road. So I will be using the B7076 in Gretna to avoid an even bigger detour than going via Gloucester.

I know, it's a Motorway.
© Copyright David Bagshaw and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

I will post the details of the route during this week. There will also be posts about various bits of the route, I may even do some statistics. Pressing questions such as "Is the Middlesborough Transport Bridge actually a ferry?", "What if the A890 at Strome Ferry is still closed when I reach it?" and "How many days have I booked the Travelodge breakfast bag?" will be tackled over the next few weeks. Once I've started my holiday I will try to update everyday with photos and tales of the journey.

Would prefer to not have any of that thank you...
© Copyright Richard Dorrell and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

It's 13 days, over 3000 miles, in a Citroen C3, and it all starts in glamorous fashion here at the end of March. Most of all though, it's going to be fun and I hope a great way to see lots of Britain!

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