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Looks like that could be useful... if your sat nav is a TomTom, that is.

Do I take it you work for Enjoy England, RedApples25 ...?

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UK hotels - UK tourist attractions

The roads aren't so bad... depends where you go, I guess.

I've been inspired by the BBC Coast programmes and would like to some time go round the entire coast of the British Isles. Not in one go, of course, but in multiple trips over a period of years, in order to get to know some of the places a little.

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UK hotels - UK tourist attractions

My parents have a Tom Tom and it has generally been a very useful addition to the family! I don't have one and probably should as my husband is absolutely infamous at getting lost!!!

I also want a Tom Tom, but for my husband. I may get him one for Valentines. Not the most romantic gift, but it will cut down on the arguments in the car :)

Looks like that could be useful... if your sat nav is a TomTom, that is.

Do I take it you work for Enjoy England, RedApples25 ...?

Hello RedApples25, i have an idea regarding folks to holiday in this Wonderful land of ours,(pics merged with original music) from an American perspective. Its basically about driving around England,unfortunatley music is not allowed on the site. PS, Possibaly a lyric! accompanied by a slide show of places visited?.Appreiciate any other advice on the idea?..Regards.Aug

I don't drive, but am one of the dying breed of hitchhikers. THAT is the way to enjoy England by car! Head in a general direction but go where the cars take you. Sometimes you only see roundabouts, but do not care because you are practising your craft, trying for the next lift. You can find the strangest places, inaccessible by public transport nowadays, and meet some fun people in the process. The engineer from Wigan who had just resigned in protest was worth the wait, as were the lovely old couple in Bristol with their 1950s car, the lorry drivers with a huge range of unappreciated interests trying them all out on you to see if you can talk to them about them, the blonde in the Porsche who had no problem picking me up (she would not have one, but how would she know?) and all the ex-hitchers, always wanting to tell you what you are doing wrong, but very helpful in pointing out attractions en route. You appreciate the country much more when you see it reflected in the other natives.

Of course you have to be careful hitchhiking, but with a mobile phone and compressed air alarm you are perfectly equipped. We are not all knife murderers you know!

Hi Lola. Obviously the people who are scared of hitchhikers never picked me up, so I never met them, but I was always surprised at the number of unaccompanied women who picked me up (I am male, six foot one, unattractive to anyone except Mrs. Varangarian and hidden behind beard and glasses - quite a forbidding companion for a car journey). The only difficulty I faced was with an old man who picked me up on the motorway somewhere in Berkshire, on the way to Bath (home at that point). He asked me where I had been, and as it happened, I had been to church, but in Surrey. He said that "it must be difficult, with all those girls walking round in short skirts." I did not encounter any, so gave a non-committal reply, but he kept saying "girls in short skirts and that" over and over again for several minutes. I asked to be dropped at the Membury Services, not where I had asked him to take me. Thankfully I never saw him again.

Ever seen dawn break at Membury Services? Do. The combination of aggressively modern and commercial surroundings and eternal English dawn is one of the finest things you will ever see.

I couldn't hitch hike. I understand why people do it and I am sure that you do get to meet some great characters, but I would never feel safe.

Hello Honeybunch, Katie, Curlymarch and all. My hitchhiking experiences are many and varied - there is no average time to wait for lifts. Some roads are better than others, but you do not know until you get dropped which is which - some vary depending on the time of year too. You get little insights into places by who drives by, like all the elderly couples driving along in old industrial villages in the northeast, all the young people having disappeared with the coal and steel long ago.

The best lift in terms of distance was from Liverpool to Addlestone, Surrey. He was a Sussex-based architect building something up there. Nowadays if it gets too dark you get on the motorways, and hitch for 24 hours from services to services. Once I got from Bewcastle (far north of Cumberland, middle of nowhere) to Cherwell Valley Services (Oxfordshire) with three lifts in eight hours. Then I couldn't get the last 60 miles or so to London after getting that far! Slept on the nearest churchyard bench until dawn, then back to the services for a wagon which took me practically to the doorstep. Great fun walking round the familiar district knowing where I had been not long before.

Road through the South of England - the A35 from Poole across to Exeter is fun, as is the A30 from Salisbury west through Somerset. If this is too far west, try the other extreme - the B roads centred on Tenterden take you through the flat country in Kent, with wonderfully various villages and big houses standing apart like medieval manors. What do others think?