Three British Road Trips That Feel Like You Teleported to Another Country
While there are many well-known and familiar sights in Albion, you can always find some fascinating travel destinations that will surprise and delight you. From Scotland to Wales and beyond, there are many interesting and much less travelled roads waiting to be explored, making for a unique experience.
The North Coast 500
The great Scottish road trip, so to speak: the North Coast 500 is a 516-mile round trip starting and ending at Inverness Castle, and it shows off all the natural beauty the highlands have to offer. It’s decidedly a multi-day affair, with highlights including Applecross, Caithness, and Dunrobin Castle – but the official guide offers many more beauties off the beaten path.
This one isn’t exactly a sleeper, mind: you should plan ahead with your itinerary, and spring-summer months are very much peak season. You’ll be navigating narrow roads, too, with designated passing places rather than the luxury alternative of having consistent multiple lanes and the like.
The Snowdonia Passes
Having crossed off Scotland, how about Wales next? The mountain passes, or bylchau, offer an incredible variety in a surprisingly confined bit of land. Highlights include the Llanberis Pass, the Ogwen Valley, the Pass of Aberglaslyn, and the Sychnant Pass. Remarkably, you can drive from coastal dunes to alpine-looking mountain passes in less than an hour, passing through slate quarry towns that look like nowhere else in Britain along the way.
Make the Evenings Count
If you want to properly explore such locales, you’ll have to plan with a multi-day trip – and long driving days typically end somewhere remote in the early evening with limited hospitality options. This is where you'll want to account for some alternatives to your usual entertainment options.
In the digital age, we have a range of commodities available to us: streaming services like Netflix and Paramount+, audiobooks and podcasts from Audible and Spotify, and online games like Buzz Bingo Megaways slots. The advantage to all of these things is that there are many, many titles to choose from, and you can theoretically interact with them just about anywhere, from the comfort of your portable mobile phone or laptop. However, while many apps allow you to download movies and audiobooks, for instance, not all of them do, and particularly iGaming options may require an internet connection to play, to allow you to make deposits and collect potential winnings. You'll therefore need to make sure you have a WiFi connection wherever you stay, or bring plenty of options that are available offline.
It is a practical consideration that route guides tend to skip over, but anyone who has stayed in a highland guesthouse in November will recognise the problem.
The Jurassic Coast
Thanks to the magic of cinema, we all have a vague idea of what this route is all about – but there won’t be any dinosaurs involved, just the magic of geology. As it turns out, the 95-mile stretch of Dorset and East Devon is actually a World Heritage coastline, one that gives off distinctly Mediterranean vibes alongside its rich geological history. Just consider something like Durdle Door, or Lulworth Cove, maybe the golden cliffs around West Bay? All fall very far from your typical idea of a grand British countryside.
This route offers more disruptions and a slower pace than the other two, with villages, single-lane bridges, and seasonal traffic to contend with – rather than the annual pack of tourists, for what this difference is worth – but your reward for your perseverance is a sight of a coastline with genuinely unparalleled history, with the beauty to match.
Ignore the daft stereotypes: Britain offers much more variety than you might first believe. Kerouac didn’t know what he was missing out on when it comes to a proper UK road trip.
