Once, The Great North Road was spoken of as the UK's own version of
America's Route 66: the Mother Road, threading its way across this
green and pleasant land, linking the capitals of London and
Edinburgh, taking in the great cities of York and Newcastle,
numerous market towns and villages whose old coaching inns now
catered for a new, romantic breed: the motorist. But all of that
has long gone. Hasn't it? Isn't the Great North Road now dead:
buried by the A1, with its motorway-grade stretches and ubiquitous
town by-passes? Not a bit of it. Because the A1 is not the Great
North Road. Realignment, renumbering, re-routing and extensive
upgrading have meant that it bears little relation to the original
highway. No more than a quarter of the modern A1 follows the route
of the true Great North Road. So, has that evocatively-named
highway been wiped off the map? Actually, no. It's still there, but
heavily disguised. These days it is hidden, renumbered as, among
others, the B197, the A602, and the B656, but often still known
locally as The Great North Road. All it has lost is the traffic
that grew and grew until it clogged this great national artery.
That old, original route can still be driven the 400 miles from
capital to capital, on a journey that does indeed have much in
common with cruising America's Route 66. Driving the Real Great
North Road is travel writer Andy Bull's account of doing just that.
It's also about re-living a time when the road, in the words of JB
Priestley, cut through towns like a knife through cheese; when it
guided stars from Sting to Bryan Ferry, Mark Knopfler to Eric
Burdon, to fame and fortune; when Dorothy L Sayers found a road
"that winds away like a long, flat, steel-grey ribbon - a surface
like a race-track, without traps, without hedges, without
side-roads, and without traffic." All you need to do is find the
old road first. This book will help you do so.
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