Driving conditions: Bath - N. Devon / Exmoor
 

Instead of commuting to still another cute town, we decided to bite the bullet and rent a car for 3 days, driving from Bath and back to see North Devon / Exmoor. But first we would like to find out how is driving in this corner of England: is it more like countryside, or like a continuous city ? Density of roads near Bath seems pretty high...

I thought it was pretty easy driving this area in general. Two caveats: 1 - I usually recommend buying one of the detailed spiral bound map books (when you are there); it makes the roundabouts much easier when your map shows *all* the road exits, not just the main ones. 2 - some of the side roads can be pretty narrow (and have thick hedge or stone wall at the sides); this is more challenging if you are driving on the "wrong" side of the road (for you).

&quot;<i>is it more like countryside, or like a continuous city ? Density of roads near Bath seems pretty high...</i>&quot;

Traffic/parking in Bath can be a real issue. But there are park and ride lots on the outskirts where you can leave the car for free and take an inexpensive bus into town. If you plan on staying in a B&amp;B in Bath - make sure they have parking. Then you can just leave your car there and walk or bus into town.

As for the rest of your question, North Devon and Exmoor tend to be very rural w/ narrow, winding roads - some are <b><u>very</u></b>. There are really no cities/suburbs. Just lots of narrow roads w/ some amazing scenery . . . . .

Except for main roads around Bath or Exeter - it will be slow going. We're talking mainly 30/35 mph (or less) roads

that should have said &quot; . . .tend to be very rural w/ narrow, winding roads - some are <b><u>very </u></b> narrow.&quot;

Dense roads on English maps can be very misleading to people from empty countries.

First, the practicalities of drawing a map mean that roads are ALWAYS distorted on road atlases: they're always drawn as if they were hundreds of times wider than they really are. If they were drawn to scale, you simply couldn't see them.

If you take the route from Bath to Exmoor that goes south of Bristol, you're on country roads, mostly through countryside that's empty by English standards or relatively pretty small towns. Go the faster roundabout route, north to the M4, then down the M5, and you're in countryside pretty much all the time, except for a brief bit to the west of Bristol where you're passing a huge mall and logistics centre.

There's absolutely no sense of a continuous city - or at least not to us. BUT England's one of the most densely populated countries on earth. Deep countryside - with the exception of Exmoor, whose main attraction to us is its near-total emptiness - still has church spires and short strips of housing. To most people, that's its charm.

It also makes driving very, very slow. janisj's ludicrously optimistic if she thinks you'll average 30 mph. Going the non-motorway route to Exmoor from Bath will be slower than that, as you're forever having to slow for windy roads and going through delightful villages.

Personally, I don't think Bath's a sensible base for driving back and forth to North Devon: what you really have to do is take the long route north and west of Bristol to get there reasonably quickly. But Bath - once you've mastered the getting in and out problem - is a great base for tootling round the pretty countryside it's surrounded by.

Unless you're looking for a US-style National Park, you won't find the relatively high population density a problem.

well - I did say &quot;or less&quot; :)

But yes - for sure, in Exmoor and many parts of North Devon 30 MPH would be impossibly fast.

I once stayed in South Devon for a couple of weeks and the last 8 miles to the cottage was pretty much single track w/ high hedge rows and it usually took me 25-30 minutes. And I am very used to driving in the UK. And Exmoor is even more remote than where I stayed.

igortek - So now Scotland is out, and you want to drive around on some of the narrowest/slowest roads around? You can't really do it as day trips from Bath - so I assumed you meant staying in Devon for a couple of days.

Around Bath, driving conditions are very good. Expect countryside with compact villages scattered across the country.

From Bath to Exmoor/North Devon, you take M5 which is very fast. Depending on your destination in North Devon, you will leave M5 near Taunton or Tiverton. From Tiverton, you are pretty close to the Tarr Steps. If you go further west to the Ilfracombe/Woolacombe area, you proceed on the fast-driving A361 to Barnstaple.

But anyway, you will reach a point when you have to turn on these incredibly narrow, hedged single-track roads. E.g. the drive from Barnstaple to Woolacombe is just 22km/14miles and viamichelin estimates 23min driving time, but we drove the route several times and never made it under 45min which means we reached an average speed of 18mph.

Driving in the high country of Exmoor is somewhat faster because there the roads are wider and not hedged. However, driving time from Tarr Steps to Lynmouth is about an hour (viamichelin says 29min). You can reach an average speed of 20mph - but this requires really fast driving and passing slower cars (which is an adventure in itsself on these winding, narrow roads).

And you will certainly stop frequently, take pictures, pet the animals, walk &amp; look.

You might be interested in my trip report on North Devon/Exmoor:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=35148574

&quot;Icredibly narrow roads&quot;... I can vividly hear a mirror on my left, poorely controlled side being crashed against a stone wall :-)

What is left, reasonably close to Bath ? Looking for ideas into &quot;Britain best-loved driving tours&quot;, Bath countriside is clearly lacking any of them. May be South-East Wales ? Are roads good enough over there ?