A Do-It-Yourself Driving Tour Through Britain

A picture-post card sunset on the stormy Northumberland coast: Bamburgh Castle’s brooding towers jutting up from the rocky headland, a stark silhouette against the fire-gold sky and threatening clouds.

In the dramatic twilight, fishing trawlers make their way toward this tiny port on the British coast, great flocks of sea gulls wheeling in their wake. On the darkening skyline to the east are the Farne Islands and the North Sea.

Heavy swells crash against the great sea walls guarding the harbor but inside the waters are calm, the air fresh with the smells of the ocean. Up a few stone steps from the quay stands the Olde Ship Inn, with a pub that could double as a maritime museum and a dining table loaded with good food.

Innkeeper Allen Glenn, whose family has owned this small hotel for nearly a century, sets out two pints of ale, explaining how Whitehall has granted him a special radio license to communicate with the fishing boats and report any emergencies. At the end of the bar is a radar set for patrons to watch the fishing boats coming into port.

1,500-Mile Odyssey

It was mid-July, and this was day nine of a 1,500-mile odyssey-- motoring across the back roads of Britain.

Ahead lay Edinburgh and a journey west and north into the Scottish Argylls and the highland moors. We were bound for the Firth of Linnhe and Fort William.

Our holiday had started with four days of shopping, theater and dining in London. Then we headed for the rural byways and “one-tracks,” those single-lane, two-way routes into the most remote areas.

Driving the one-tracks requires more time and courtesy; the roads are so narrow that there’s room for only one car. Numerous pull-outs have been built along these roads to allow one car to pull over and the other to pass.

Like most first-time visitors to England and Scotland, my wife Dorothy and I wanted to see as much as we could in a 16-day, do-it-yourself tour that had no specific destinations or reservations. London was an exception; we booked a hotel there and picked up our rental car, which we had arranged through Foremost EuroCar of Van Nuys, Calif.

With so little time, we had to choose which areas to visit and which to leave for another vacation. We found that getting from one district to another takes less time than we’d expected--the distance from London to Edinburgh is about the same as from Los Angeles to San Francisco--and that once off the Motorways we could laze along at our own pace.

The Motorways in Britain (in blue on the map) are fast freeways where speeds of 80 m.p.h. put you in the flow of traffic. The numbered A-routes (in green) are major two- and four-lane thoroughfares punctuated by the famous roundabout traffic circles that bedevil American drivers for the first day or so. Watch for traffic entering the circle on the right.

The Motorways and A-routes are well-marked. The rural B-routes are also marked, but the black-on-white signposts along these lesser roads are sometimes harder to find, especially in towns and villages where the route markers may be nailed high up on the side of a building. The one-tracks are even smaller than the B-routes--some are only 6 feet, 6 inches wide--and are designated as single-lane routes.

Good Road Atlas

To travel these back roads you will need a good road atlas--we used the Reader’s Digest-Automobile Assn.’s “New Book of the Road.” A simple pocket compass also comes in handy, since at times the back roads wander like Uncle Billy’s goat, going back around the barn and through the fields, and you can easily lose track of your direction. The roads are almost always lined by rock walls that farmers use to fence in their fields. Without a little help, it’s easy to get lost.

While part of the fun is not knowing quite where the road may lead or where you are going to spend the night, it is handy to have a reference book or two to help choose your general direction and to point out the local attractions. Pocket-size books such as Richard Binn’s “Best of Britain” give some history of each area and a listing of overnight accommodations and restaurants.

Most towns of any size have a government-run tourist information center that not only sells books and maps, but will also make reservations (for a small fee) for hotels or bed-and-breakfast inns. These tourist centers are interconnected, so you can book ahead if you want a confirmed reservation. If you feel like winging it, there are numerous bed-and-breakfast places along most of the back roads and in most villages.

In London we stayed at 16 Sumner Place, a comfortable little hotel in the Kensington district just a block-and-a-half from the subway station. Our car was a Fiat Regatta, which rented for $236 for 12 days, plus a surprising $80 insurance fee that no one had mentioned beforehand.

Driving a car with all the controls on the “wrong” side takes some getting used to. I suggest that after the car-rental staff gives you its perfunctory briefing, take some additional time getting used to where all the controls are, and think left, left, left.

Not following my own advice, I started the engine and headed out the right-hand driveway, almost causing a head-on smashup with a car that was coming into the station. Unnerved, I quickly backed up, nearly putting the car through a plate-glass window, then headed out the correct (left) way, and we were off on our adventure, my wife navigating.

Challenge of Roundabouts

Just up the street we came to a roundabout, with cars speeding around the traffic circle coming from the right, going left, and other cars entering at what looked like a head-on approach. Don’t panic. After the first day or so, even the roundabouts become ordinary challenges and you begin to relax and enjoy the English countryside.

Distances here seem to be built in miniature scale, compared to California. In England, it seems, you’re never far from somewhere else.

At any crossroad the signs might read: Stow-on-the-Wold, 3.5 miles; Bledington, 0.5 miles; Icomb, 1.75 miles. Each village has its surprises for the visitor. At a church bazaar we bought handsome, hand-knit wool sweaters for about what Harrods would charge in London.

Our first destination was the village of Kingham in Oxfordshire, west of London about two hours by high-speed Motorway and small back roads, through Coxford and Chipping Norton and on south past Churchill. Then we were in the Cotswolds--that gentle, rolling land of green hills, farms and picturesque villages with names such as Burton-on-the-Water and Morton-in-the Marsh.

We stayed at the Mill, a quiet 20-room country inn surrounded by meadows, a tiny stream and horse pastures where mares and their foals grazed. Some of the inn’s stone buildings date to Norman times. The interiors were modern and comfortable, the hospitality a bit formal but cordial, and the food was good. The overnight stay, including dinner and breakfast, cost 64 (about $102 U.S. on today’s market).

We spent two days touring the Cotswolds, then drove north through the valley of the River Avon to Stratford-on-Avon. There it became painfully obvious that we only had time to quickly see the sights, take a quick walk through the Elizabethan old town, visit Harvard House and then drive on without having had a chance to see a performance at the Royal Shakespeare Theater.

Our plan was to take big jumps on the Motorways to give us more time in places such as Lake District National Park on the Irish Sea. This is a mountainous, forested land formed by volcanoes and the glacial forces of the Ice Age. It is filled with mountain passes and hanging valleys, lakes and tarns. It is also the homeland of William Wordsworth; a visit to Dove Cottage in Grasmere where he lived is like stepping into a time warp.

From Ambleside, at the head of Lake Windermere, there is a one-track route up through the Cumbrian Mountains and over Hard Knot Pass that provides some of the most breathtaking views in this part of England. Up in these wind- and rain-swept mountains, the rugged little road passes meadowlands filled with sheep, stone bridges crossing clear streams, waterfalls, cottages and the ruins of a Roman fort.

Hadrian’s Wall

On day nine we headed for the rocky, storm-lashed Northumberland coast, stopping along the way for a view of the ruins of Hadrian’s Wall, built by the Romans in AD 120 to protect their northernmost border from raiding Scots. From Seahouses we could see the Farne Islands, a chain of wind-swept rock outcrops that are a bird sanctuary, approachable by boats that leave Seahouses’ harbor each morning and afternoon.

The trip out and around the islands takes about an hour, and passes by rocky cliffs crusted white by swarms of nesting sea birds. Weather permitting, visitors are landed on Farne Island, a 16-acre, treeless bit of property where several thousand Arctic terns nest yearly, along with puffins, cormorants and dozens of other birds. There also is an old stone chapel--St. Culbert’s, built in 1390--and an old lighthouse.

From Seahouses, it’s only a few minutes’ drive to Bramburgh Castle. The first Norman fortifications on this rocky promontory were built in the 9th Century, but the site had been occupied earlier by Romans, Saxons and Vikings. Legend says King Arthur and Sir Galahad once lived here and, true or not, the castle looks like something out of Camelot.

After a one-day stop in Edinburgh, we drove west into the Argylls, again heading for the back roads, driving through Crieff on A-85 past Loch Earn and over the Pass of Bander where King Robert Bruce defeated the MacDougalls in 1308.

At Taynuilt we turned south on B-845 to Kilchrenan and onto the one-track out to the Taycreggan Inn on Loch Awe, arriving in a misting rain at this old drover’s inn run by John and Tove Taylor (no relation). The Taylors welcome their guests to a warming fire and a hearty, well-prepared meal. The rooms, while small, are comfortable. The tab runs 84 per night, double occupancy, including breakfast and dinner.

The Argylls offered some of the wildest, most beautiful drives of the trip. There is the brooding Rannoch Moor high in the mountains, where one minute black clouds whistle through the windy passes, blowing rain, and the next minute the sun breaks through and the dark mountains turn glowing green, highlighting the purple heather blooms and wildflowers. There is water everywhere, tumbling off the steep cliffs, rushing down a thousand brooks.

Having come so far by car, we dropped the Fiat in Glasgow and caught a flight back to London--a standby ticket for the hourly flights is 50--and our only bad experience of the trip, an awful meal at a motel near Heathrow Airport.