There is a peculiar thing that happens when you own a car. You spend an extraordinary amount of money buying it, insuring it, taxing it, maintaining it and filling it with fuel, only to spend most of your time using it for journeys you don’t particularly want to make. Going to work. Sitting in traffic. Visiting the supermarket. Taking something to the tip. Even the most exciting cars eventually find themselves carrying a bag of shopping and a packet of toilet rolls home from Tesco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every so often, therefore, I think we owe our cars and perhaps ourselves something better. A journey with absolutely no practical purpose whatsoever. No appointment at the other end, no deadline and preferably no motorway. Just a few hours, a full tank of fuel and a road interesting enough to remind you why you enjoyed driving in the first place. For that, Wales has provided us with something rather special, the A4069 across the Black Mountain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Running between Llandovery and Brynamman, the road climbs into a landscape that seems to grow larger around you with every mile. The towns and houses gradually disappear, the horizon expands and before long there isn’t much around except mountains, open countryside and a strip of tarmac winding its way across it all. This is the sort of place where your sat-nav becomes almost irrelevant. You can see the road ahead curling around the hillside and, frankly, that’s all the navigation you really need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The A4069 has become famous among driving enthusiasts, and once you’re on it the reason isn’t particularly difficult to understand. It flows. One bend leads naturally into another, climbs become descents and every so often you crest a rise to discover an entirely new landscape spread out ahead. You don’t need to be travelling at ridiculous speeds to enjoy it either. The pleasure comes from getting into a rhythm with the road, choosing a gear, feeling the car settle through a corner and then watching the next section appear through the windscreen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, enormous horsepower might be completely beside the point here. Give me something relatively small, a decent gearbox and steering that actually tells you what the front wheels are doing and I’d be delighted. An MX-5 would probably be tremendous. A Caterham would be hilarious. An old MG would feel completely at home. And, having recently spent an article waxing lyrical about the Jaguar E-Type, I would of course be prepared to conduct a thorough evaluation of a Series 1 Roadster across the Black Mountain. This is the level of sacrifice we’re prepared to make at Great British Rally. Unfortunately, nobody has yet volunteered the E-Type, we are still open for that offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The weather can add another dimension entirely. On a clear day, with the roof down or the windows open, you’re suddenly part of the landscape rather than watching it through glass. You feel the air become cooler as the road climbs and hear the engine working against the gradient. The smell of warm countryside drifts through the cabin and occasionally you find yourself slowing down simply because the view has become too good to ignore. Wales has a habit of producing scenery like that without making much fuss about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then there are the sheep, plenty of sheep. No account of driving through rural Wales would be complete without them, they’re part of the scenery. They stand beside the road watching you approach with the expression of animals that have seen considerably more interesting cars than yours and weren’t impressed by those either. There is something rather humbling about arriving in a machine whose manufacturer spent millions developing its styling only to have it comprehensively ignored by a sheep chewing grass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually you’ll find somewhere to stop, switch off the engine and get out. Looking back across the mountain, you can often pick out sections of the road you’ve just travelled, disappearing and reappearing across the landscape. Suddenly a journey that achieved absolutely nothing in practical terms feels like a remarkably good use of an afternoon. You’ve gone nowhere you needed to go, accomplished nothing that needed accomplishing and probably used rather more petrol than you would have done sitting at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet you’ll remember it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s the bit statistics about cars never capture. We can argue endlessly about horsepower, acceleration, N\u00fcrburgring lap times and whether the latest dashboard really needed a touchscreen large enough to operate air traffic control, but none of those things explain why people sometimes walk out of the house, look at the car and decide to go somewhere simply for the pleasure of getting there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Black Mountain Pass is a particularly beautiful place to rediscover that feeling, but ultimately it doesn’t have to be the Black Mountain. Somewhere near you there will be a road you’ve passed countless times without taking, a village you’ve seen on a sign but never visited or a stretch of countryside you’ve always promised yourself you’d explore one day. You don’t need an E-Type, a supercar or an elaborate itinerary. You need a car, some spare time and enough curiosity to wonder what’s around the next corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So while the days are still reasonably long and Britain hasn’t yet remembered that autumn is approaching, perhaps there’s an argument for occasionally ignoring the quickest route. Turn off the motorway, take the road across the hills and see where you end up. If there’s a good pub at the other end, excellent. If there’s a castle, even better. And if there is absolutely nothing there at all, it probably doesn’t matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because sometimes going somewhere isn’t the point, its not the destination, its the experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes you just need to drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Great British Rally<\/strong> There is a peculiar thing that happens when you own a car. You spend an extraordinary amount of money buying it, insuring it, taxing it, maintaining it and filling it with fuel, only to spend most of your time using it for journeys you don’t particularly want to make. Going to work. Sitting in traffic.…
The Spirit of the Open Road<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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