Five Great Roads in Northumberland

Five roads where the landscape and the machine come together.

Northumberland is the least densely populated county in England, and it drives like it. There are roads here where you can go twenty minutes without meeting another car, on surfaces that reward a well-sorted classic and scenery that makes you want to stop every mile.

These are the five we come back to. None of them is a secret, but all five are better than their reputations suggest.

1. The Military Road, B6318

From Heddon-on-the-Wall west towards Greenhead, laid along the line of Hadrian's Wall. General Wade's men built the original road on top of the Roman one, which is why it runs so improbably straight and rides the ridge rather than skirting it.

The effect is a sequence of long crests where you can see the road rising and falling ahead of you for miles. Watch your speed over the summits, watch for sheep, and stop at Steel Rigg or Sycamore Gap to see why people come from the other side of the world for this.

2. The A68 to Carter Bar

North from Corbridge through Redesdale to the Scottish border. This is the road with the reputation, and it earns it: a rollercoaster of blind crests and sweeping curves through increasingly empty country.

It is also a working road with lorries on it, and those crests hide things. Drive it early on a Sunday morning if you can. The border at Carter Bar, with the whole of the Cheviots behind you and Scotland opening out ahead, is one of the great arrival points in Britain.

3. The Coquet Valley to Alwinton

Rothbury westwards, following the river up into the hills until the tarmac gives up somewhere past Alwinton. Narrow, wooded, then suddenly bare.

This is the most intimate road on the list. Second and third gear, hedges close on both sides, the river appearing and disappearing beside you. It suits the TR4 better than anything else we run — a car that feels quick at thirty and rewards a road that never lets you exceed it.

4. The coast road, B1339 and B1340

Alnmouth to Bamburgh, tracing the sea. Not a fast road, and not meant to be. It threads through Craster, Embleton, Beadnell and Seahouses, with Dunstanburgh's ruins on the skyline for most of it and Bamburgh Castle rising ahead at the end.

Do it with the roof down and the sea on your right, late in the afternoon, when the light comes in low across the dunes. This is the stretch at the heart of a weekend driving the Northumberland coast.

5. Bellingham to Kielder

Up the North Tyne, past the reservoir and into the forest. Kielder holds the largest man-made lake in northern Europe and England's biggest forest, and the road that runs through it is quiet in a way that feels almost strange.

It is also the darkest place in England, which is worth knowing in both directions: extraordinary skies after nightfall, and no lighting at all when you are trying to get home. Fill up before you commit — fuel is thin on the ground beyond Bellingham.

Practical notes

Northumberland roads are exposed and the weather turns quickly. What was dry at Corbridge can be running with water on the tops.

Sheep and cattle have right of way in practice if not in law, and unfenced moorland roads mean lambs in spring appearing from nowhere.

Mobile signal is unreliable across most of the west of the county. Download your route before you set off rather than trusting it to load.

And fuel stations close early, and on Sundays sometimes not at all, once you are away from the A1 and the market towns.

If you would rather drive these roads in something that makes the effort worthwhile, the E-Type, TR4 and Defender are all available for the day. Check your date and we will plan the route, book the lunch and leave you to it.