On Friday morning at 8 o’clock, I will set off at a laden-Landrover-defined speed of around 40 mph for Shrewsbury. I know exactly how long it will take, just under 2 hours, as I make the same journey on the same Friday each year. SatNav? SchmatNav! I don’t even need one of my much loved maps. The route is hardwired. The litany of Marcher placenames is entirely reassuring : Wimboldsley, Sound, Burleydam, Edstaston, Preston Gubbals. At Bomere Heath, I am almost there. No matter the names on the fingerposts, I am familiar enough with the hedgerows to home my way there.
Making the same journey at the same time each year brings other associations: the angle of morning sun, the likelihood of mist and dew on the meadows, the songbirds mustering voice for their last autumn hurrah after the lull of summer. Indeed, until I started doing Shrewsbury, I never realised just how autumnal is the August Bank Holiday weekend.
I could go by a different route, but I never will now. It would be almost blasphemous. It is fair to say that I order my world in geographical terms. So I can appreciate how set paths were used for processional routes, the carriage of coffins across moors to consecrated land; for pilgrimages; for the marking of life-sustaining territory. You can imagine how Chatwin’s Songlines struck a chord with me. The idea of a land known, revered and sung through a series of journeys, real and conceptual, made perfect sense.
There are other journeys that I make which I savour each time they come around – the descent from Greenup Edge into Borrowdale; a valley in mid-Wales with a particular hostelry at its head; my teenage cycle escape route to the Shropshire Hills. They all feel like homecomings and once the journey is started, I am comforted and know that everything will be just fine ( and appropriately enough, on Saturday night, Blowzabella will open with The Long Drive, and I will be in heaven ).
I don’t think this is just me. Tom Fort spun a whole book out of the idea of the A303 as a Highway to the Sun, an escape to family holidays. A lope to a tryst? A walk with the dog? Do you have journeys of meaning?
Nice piece, Mr Cat. There used to be a journey we did to Yorkshire at least once a year, from London to a tiny village called Old Byland, where some friends had a cottage they used to lend us when we were skint. It involved an interminable slog up the A1, then across to Thirsk and from there up Sutton Bank, and on to the Moors. Through Cold Kirby and we were there. We all loved it, and it was fascinating to watch the kids get less and less fractious as we got closer and the road got narrower and narrower. Sadly the friends eventually sold the cottage and that was that, but I still yearn to make the journey again, and will some day.
Talking of well-travelled routes, has anybody read The Ancient Paths: Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe, by Graham Robb? I’m deep in it now, and it’s absolutely fascinating. Those Celts, they knew a thing or two. Turns out those straight Roman roads we’re all so impressed by were built right on top of Celtic roads.
That would be the Graham Robb whose Discovery of France was another of those books where it felt the author had written it specifically with me in mind. This Ancient Paths sounds like another.
I am well known for my odd and unusual shortcuts, often ultimately longcuts thru’ villages and B roads that stick fast in my memory. A particular favourite is the route from Solihull, where I used to live, and Warwick Arts Centre, via a Watery Lane, Temple Balsall and Kenilworth.
Lovely drive.
Good theme, Mr Cat. Here’s mine, images of which are still vivid to me, some fifty or so years on.
When I was a lad we would go to spend the summer holidays with my grandparents in the far north of Scotland. The routine was unvarying and the journey from St Andrews to Golspie in our trusty Jowett Javelin was eagerly anticipated. I-spy book? Check. AA handbook to check county of origin of passing vehicles? Check. Bag of boiled sweeties? Check.
We would head across to Perth and then up the A9 – single carriageway in those days – through the Cairngorms to Inverness. So far, so civilised and then off into the wild country – Beauly, Muir of Ord, Dingwall, Often we would go over the hills via Dalnavie and stop for a picnic lunch by a highland stream with crystal clear water and a faint aroma of peat. Then onward to Bonar Bridge and Spinningdale.
As Ben Bhraggie and its hated equestrian statue hove into view, we would reach The Mound and know that, at last, we were “nearly there”. As we entered the village, we would check to see that the toyshop, where our pocket money was destined to be spent, was still there. Then through the main street to the Church and a right turn into Duke Street which led us to our destination – Tower Lodge.
For the next few weeks this would be our home and for a young boy, the natural playgrounds provided by the vast forest, the burn by the house and the sea side walk to Dunrobin Castle were truly blissful. All made possible, of course, by that still memorable journey.
We used to go and stay with my Grandad in Scarborough when I was a littlun. Mum wouldn’t allow Dad to drive on the M1 because it scared her so we went all the way on the old A1. We also had to get up about 4 am to avoid the traffic. Trouble is everyone had the same idea so we were in gridlock pretty much before we got to the end of our road. The journey took about four days.
But on the upside it was the only day of the year we were allowed to drink milk. It was literally poured down our throats before leaving the house when on every other day of the year we were told it wasn’t ‘for drinking’.
I had frequent car journeys to Bradford from Surrey. This was mainly on the M1 and featured frequent service station stops because the journey was *that* gruelling and intrepid. Took at least 5 hours.
Boiled sweets covered in icing sugar in a circular tin, in between service stations.
The M1 doesn’t offer much in the way of scenery but it was a thrill to see the HQ of the RAC and the genuinely beautiful cooling towers that the road gets elevated around Sheffield. Arriving in Bradford was a bit grim as both grandmothers lived in rough areas and both houses were ice-cold. We would stay at either or both of those houses for a week or so before going home again, doing the journey in reverse and feeling more upbeat. I recall watching the orange motorway lights flash by while quietly singing along to the Sunday night top 40 show on Radio 1, which my parents were kind enough to put on for my benefit. Space Oddity was number one and I knew all the words.
The estuary road to Aberdovey. Nuts to the riviera – this was exquisite. Even better, the coastal train, puffing along. Don’t look for it now …
For fifteen years, the first Saturday in September has me driving from Sheffield to Slimbridge to play toy soldiers with a shifting band of like-minded folks. It’s a 6:30am start; M1, A42, M42, M5 with a stop for cappuccino and a chocolate pastry at Tamworth services.
As the Cotswolds come into view I’m genuinely excited to see friends again after a year. For some reason I always find myself listening to Queens of the Stone Age on the car stereo. In fact it’s the only time I listen to QOTSA.
In the past few years it’s also become a father and son trip as my eldest has become a keen wargamer.
This year, there’s a sense of sadness, though. The particular game we play there is no longer my favourite and the host hotel is starting to take an approach I dislike (no Saturday-only bookings for that weekend). This feels exploitative and seems poor reward for my support over a decade and a half.
Should I call it quits after this year or is the pull of friendship and tradition strong enough to justify swallowing my pride and paying for a full weekend’s accommodation?
Some. My son lived in North Carolina for a few years, about 370 miles away. The route isn’t difficult – 66 West, 81 South, 77 South and then off at 136.
But I’ve driven it a lot. I also drive that route for rugby a lot as well. And it’s gorgeous. You’re in the Shenandoah, so mountains either side. The view over Rocky Gap is just unbelievable – miles and miles down below. If it’s misty, it looks even more gorgeous and mysterious. North Carolina is flatter and drier. Virginia. unless drought conditions, is a really verdant State for much of where I go. It’s a wonderful drive, and I know all the landmarks and towns and names instinctively.
The I68/70 route to Sistersville via Clarksburg though? That can go fuck itself.
In the family coach starting out from the cottage in Ings. Over the chicanery that is Hardknott Pass, cruise down to Boot. Park up and cross the Esk, taking the circuitous route that follows the river and eventually takes you past a Tolkeinesque pool of dark, still water. Through the ancient woodland and then bear sharp left to cross into another world. A crack in the hillside that hides near-tropical vegetation, its pungency suffocates the walls of the gorge and overdoses your lungs with wet oxygen, The thigh-aching aching climb up the steep slope and randomly-placed steps to the top of Stanley Ghyll Force waterfall. Lie down on the rocks and crawl to the edge of the world to look down upon the cascading water. Memories stirred, hip flask opened, lost friends toasted.
Ah, proper journeys, not some asshole’s progress toward making a Baked Alaska.
My recommendation would be the drive to Lewis or Harris from Glasgow. If Lewis, you drive to Ullapool; Harris through the Isle of Skye. The Highlands are unbeatable in their scale and magnificence and the West Coast stunning. Made the journey many times in different weathers and different seasons. Always fascinating, never boring.
One of the best drives ever is up the perma-perfect stretch of the M6 just north of Lancaster, between Killington Lake and Tebay – perched on the side of a vast scarp, the valley below and to your right, purple with heather and stippled with dark green scrubby bushes, great exposed folds of rock sliced through the hills on the other side. Best undertaken in stormy or louring weather at sundown for maximum drama. For me, that’ll always be the drive back in the van from Barrow when we were 21, coming off at Tebay to skirt across Bowes Moor to Scotch Corner and back up to uni – after two weeks of playing perfect shows with my band at the time. Very heaven etc. etc.
Also, a little while ago, I was driving up there from my in-laws’ place to see friends in That Scotland. Ross lives near Lockerbie, and because I was staying with him en route to Edinburgh, I ended up going cross country, just cos. Little winding, arse-end roads up the side of the Devil’s Beef Tub, all trickling brooks and deep colours and low gold sunlight glancing through wet trees.
It was like being in the beginning of the film Legend, minus a Hollywood homunculus in Spock ears. Indescribably beautiful, and all the better for being quite alone.
Every year for the last 18 years Mrs Bungliemutt and I have made the same pilgrimage to the North Yorkshire town of Whitby. As with the OP, it’s the same week every year, mid October, so we recognise the ‘Whitby Light’ of autumn and the shadows that fall in the same way on the same streets and buildings. We travel by the same route every time, and once we have left the M1 and the M18 behind, the familiarity of towns and villages along the way is like the the reassurance of old friends. By the time we reach Pickering and start the final trek across the North York Moors through Ryedale, past the Hole Of Horcum, the sadly derelict Saltersgate Inn and Fylingdales, there is genuine emotion. The first glimpse of Whitby Abbey on the headland as we descend Blue Bank into Sleights never fails to bring a lump to the throat and a hint of grit in the eye. It’s a journey of genuine love for a place that means so much to us for reasons we would both probably find hard to explain. It’s a week spent out of time once a year, and a journey we look forward to making again as soon as we have returned from it. We go to the same places, browse the same shops, take in the same sights, eat in the same plaaces, walk the same streets year after year, and every time we stand under the whalebones at dusk on our last evening and look out across the lights of the harbour, the abbey headland and the pantiled roofs of the town, we suffer the same pangs of loss at having to go home. It’s been this way for a long time, and it’s more than a journey for us, more of an affirmation of our love for each other embodied in a sense of place and happiness that is ours and ours alone.
My Great Aunt, who was a de facto grandmother to my brothers and I, and for whom my daughter is named, lived most of her life in Sleights.
It’s a lovely part of the world, she was one of my absolute favourite people until her passing ten years ago, and your post brought back a lot of happy memories. Thank you.
Lovely post.
The way from our home to Chester is a short one. It is a road I have travelled for many a year in fair weather and foul. It holds many memories. It is the road that my mother used to cycle down to dance the night away during the duration of the second world war. It is the road upon which is situated the farm my grandfather worked when mining had robbed him of his health. It passes the church I was christened in.
It has been the road I have travelled upon for the past couple of weeks to visit my wife in hospital.
Today it was the road we sped along together returning to our home.
We passed fields of sunflowers and the poppies were still blooming.
Many thanks everyone. Some lovely posts here, and many refer to roads I have known – the crossing of the Moors gives a spectacular approach to Whitby, and I’ve cycled the road to Ullapool with its widescreen vistas.
Friday’s morning was as filled with joy and anticipation as ever. The festival being as it was, next year’s journey will be similarly brimful.