- Top 5 UK road trips revealed
- Exclusive interview with author Nik Berg
- Road trip expert Nik is founder of the Detour website
- Get planning your new year adventures
These are the Top 5 best road trips the UK has to offer, as chosen by a globe-trotting expert and author of a new book.
If you’re planning some vehicular adventures in 2025, your journey starts here.
Britain is home to some of the most spectacular drives the world has to offer, from a 150-mile lap of the Isle of Skye to the mountainous passes and hair-pin bend of Wales’ Eryri National Park (Snowdonia).
Some of those stunning roads have been documented in a new coffee table book, Detour 101: 101 of the World’s Best Road Trips, by author Nik Berg (below).
(Pic credit: Jake T Nash)
Nik is a seasoned automotive journalist, who has written for titles like Auto Express and Top Gear magazine, and has been lucky enough to pilot cars all over the world.
He’s personally driven almost all of the 101 routes outlined in the book (others come from detailed interviews with those who have).
Here, in an exclusive interview with Select Car Leasing, Nik shares his personal favourite UK road trips - while also lifting the lid on some of his most dangerous exploits away from Blighty’s highways.
He says: “The ‘best’ road trip depends on what you’re looking for. It might be a challenging drive full of twists, turns and undulations, it could be super-scenic, or there might be another interesting story behind it. Either way, driving is the way to enjoy these places. If you fly, or you go by train, you’re not as absorbed in the landscape and the way it can change so rapidly with the topography. That’s why I love driving. To me it’s about freedom and being completely immersed in the environment.”
Top 5 UK Road Trips, according to author Nik Berg:
1- Northumberland (Berwick-upon-Tweed to Hexham, 96 miles)
Nik did this particular trip in his beloved 1982 Lotus Esprit S3 - but you don’t need a Bond car to enjoy this jaunt.
He says: “I’d been up in Scotland and came back via the Scottish Borders and Northumberland. The B6357 is just this incredible road which cuts through forest and open moorland. It’s relatively fast and sweeping, the scenery is amazing, and at the time I had it all to myself. I came around one particular corner and it was as if the people who built the road had known exactly where to put a parking spot. The view was incredible. It was early in the morning, I got out of the car and just had to stop and take it all in for ten minutes. It’s one of my favourite roads in England, full stop.”
2 - Buttertubs Pass, Yorkshire (Hawes to Thwaite, 7 miles)
“There are so many good routes in Yorkshire - it’s just a great driving county. One trip idea is to do a full traverse of Yorkshire, from Kendal in Cumbria to Whitby on the east coast of North Yorkshire, taking in the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors… and, of course, ending at Whitby’s famous Magpie Cafe for fish and chips. An easy detour off that main route is the Buttertubs Pass, near Hawes in the Dales. It’s narrow and fiddly until you get onto the top and then it opens up into this fabulous rollercoaster ride, with these flimsy-looking barriers on the edge to nominally stop you from tumbling down. It’s also said to be Jeremy Clarkson’s favourite UK road and he’s filmed there a number of times.”
3 - Ballachulish, Scotland (A82 to Glen Etive Parking, 13 miles)
“You’re spoiled for choice for road trips in Scotland. I’m not going to recommend the North Coast 500 (said to be the ultimate road trip around the North of Scotland and which is backed by Visit Scotland) as there are parts of it that are a bit dull as you go up the east coast. There are also a lot of speed cameras and campervans. But if you go to the west coast it gets much more interesting. Just off the A82, which runs from Glasgow to Inverness via Fort William, is the so-called ‘Skyfall’ road, where they filmed the 2012 James Bond movie of the same name. This is your perfect Instagram moment, as you stand where Daniel Craig stood and replicate the Hollywood shot. The road gets a bit sketchy and gravelly, and it’s fairly twisty, but it’s well worth it for the view at the end.”
4 - Isle of Skye circuit (Skye Bridge to Skye Bridge, 150 miles)
“Some of the scenery on Skye is so mind-boggling that it’s simply hard to fathom. The Old Man of Storr (a pinnacle of rock on the Trotternish Ridge which has featured in movies like Prometheus) is just extraordinary and it’s no wonder it gets used in films as an alien landscape. I did it in an open-top Caterham in a long day, which was a bit optimistic but still really good fun. Sometimes you’re guilty of rushing these experiences but the idea with the book is that you can always go back and repeat the journey if there are bits you feel you might have missed the first time around.”
5 - Eyri National Park, Snowdonia, circuit (Bala to Bala, 95 miles)
“Eyri National Park is tough to beat when it comes to road trips. Anywhere there are mountains you’re going to get good mountain roads. If you’re a bit outdoorsy there’s a ton of stuff to do, too, from surfing and climbing to zip-lining down a quarry at 100mph. There’s also Black Rock Sands at Morfa Bychan, near Porthmadog, which is one of the few beaches you can actually drive onto. The Llanberis Pass and Pen-y-Pass are well worth doing but you have to time it right and be willing to get up early in the morning if you want the road to yourself, while also getting the best light. It’s not always necessarily about being able to drive fast, it’s about not having to share the experience with other road users.”
And some of world’s other incredible road trips, including the most dangerous:
Death Road, Bolivia (La Paz to Coroico, 43 miles)
The El Camino del Muerte, aka Bolivia’s ‘Death Road’, is infamous, having featured in a 2009 episode of Top Gear. It snakes down 3,000 metres of mountain from La Paz to Coroico. Nik did it in 2003 - and it wasn’t just the road that was ‘dramatic’.
He says: “At the time, the Death Road was the only route linking La Paz to the jungle. They were in the process of building another road, which is the main route now, but it wasn’t open back then. When we got there, the local coca farmers had blocked the road, putting tree trunks across it and with traffic backed up for miles. To avoid the blockage, we ended up doing 24 hours of long, circuitous off-road driving through the jungle to get back onto the road. By the time we actually got to the Death Road, having suffered through the jungle, we’d already seen a lot. And as we re-joined, the riot police arrived and started firing tear gas! The whole experience was quite dramatic. When the road was finally clear a day later, the Death Road itself seemed quite tame. There were huge drops, yes, but no farmers wielding machetes. It’s still a spectacular and unpredictable route, as you can go from bright sunshine to dense clouds in the blink of an eye while waterfalls cross the road like an insane car wash, but nowadays it’s just lunatics or mountain bikers who attempt it.”
The Derebasi Turns, Turkey (Trabzon to Bayurt, 100 miles)
(Pic credit: Dave Smith/Mazda)
“This is an interesting trip in that it goes from being a normal Tarmac road to a dirt track in an instant, with no warning at all. The road just disappears. You come out of this village and you can see the infamous turns snaking all the way up a mountainside through tea plantations. The curves are really tight and in a big car - I was in a Mazda CX-60 - you can end up doing multiple three-point turns with no barriers and nothing to stop you plummeting over the edge. The weather can also be an issue. But if you take it slowly and steadily, and if you’re sensible, I don’t think it’s quite as dangerous as its reputation leads you to believe.”
Death Valley, USA (Olancha to Pahrump, 160 miles)
“There’s something about the otherworldly landscape of Death Valley that makes it compelling and if you’re not prepared it really can be quite dangerous. With temperatures as high as 60 C it’s not somewhere you want to break down, that’s for sure, and you can feel very small as you drive across it. With that arrow-straight vanishing point ahead, and the heat haze shimmering off the asphalt, it’s an unforgettable experience. I’ve done it a couple times while heading to Las Vegas, once in a horrible rented Cadillac and once in a Chevrolet Corvette, the latter of which was great fun. Although we did discover that the Corvette had been leaking fuel at an alarming rate, which we only learned when we’d reached Las Vegas - we’d been in the hottest place on earth with petrol pouring out of a car, which wasn’t ideal!”
Northern Territory, Australia (Uluru to Alice Springs, 330 miles)
“One of my most memorable road trips didn’t actually involve a road at all. When you travel from Uluru to Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, you can do it on a normal highway, which takes a couple of hours. But you can also choose to do the journey off-road, which typically takes a couple of days and is pretty much the ultimate detour. Off-roading in Australia is completely different to off-roading in the UK. Here, you’re told to take it slowly and gently. In Australia, the dirt roads are almost like main roads and you end up flying along them at 70mph because that’s what everyone else does. All of a sudden, you’ll reach a river bed and face some real challenges. The local animals pose a risk, too, with cattle and kangaroos wandering out into the road. I did the journey in a Jeep Cherokee but the local vehicle of choice is a Toyota Land Cruiser, for obvious reasons.”
** Detour 101: 101 of the World's Best Road Trips, by Nik Berg, is out now and is available to order on Amazon. With guides spanning Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and the Americas you’ll find detailed instructions and a link to a map for every Detour so you can plan your next road trip. Do yourself a favour - get the print version, rather than the Kindle edition, and feast your eyes on the incredible images that accompany Nik’s words.
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