Grand Tour
A Welsh Weekend
Two days, eleven great roads: the Beacons on Saturday, Snowdonia on Sunday.
Wales fits more great driving roads into a smaller space than anywhere else in Britain, and a weekend is genuinely enough to taste both halves. Saturday loops the Beacons, opening on the Black Mountain Pass that Top Gear made famous. Sunday runs the spine of the country north into Snowdonia, finishing between the walls of the Llanberis Pass.
The roads are quieter before nine and after four, and the weather is part of the deal: a wet Black Mountain Pass in low cloud is its own kind of brilliant. Brecon makes the natural Saturday night, with enough pubs to argue about the day's best corner.
The Beacons loop
Overnight: BreconThe south's greatest hits in one loop: the Black Mountain Pass first while it is quiet, the Bwlch and Rhigos mountain roads, the Penderyn moor road to Beacons Reservoir, the A470 over the pass at Storey Arms, and the Gospel Pass to Hay as the light goes long.
The spine to Snowdonia
Overnight: CaernarfonNorth through the empty middle: the Abergwesyn Pass's Devil's Staircase, the Elan Valley dams, then the A470 spine over Bwlch Oerddrws, through the slate country of Blaenau Ffestiniog and over the Crimea Pass, before Nant Gwynant and the Llanberis Pass deliver you to the castle town for dinner.
