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Open roads near me4/3/2023 Hit the B6320, and scythe off towards Kielder Forest, simply to feel the ghosts of rallying legends brush up against the pine trees. Epic stuff here, with big rolling sections that feel like the swell of the sea, except that the sea doesn't have potholes that feel like they might shear your buttocks clean off. Back down the A697 and we run from Rothbury to Otterburn on the B6341, across the lower section of the Northumberland National Park. Hello and goodbye to Newcastle, up the A1 to a place called Alnwick, overshooting slightly and ending up in Wooler, via the B6348. As we reach Castleton, I'm ready to face Blakey again, but we have far to go, so we head on and out, and further north. I know that I'm enjoying it when I realise that Justin the photographer is breathing heavily and trying to bury his head in a bumper bag of Revels. But watch out for the suicidally stupid sheep they may look fluffy, but wouldn't do well accelerating from standstill to 50mph bolted to the front bumper of an Audi. You don't even have to go fast to enjoy it, though the RS4 is keen for the 8,500rpm red line, and more than capable of dealing with the changes in grip. On these swooping, sighted, slightly greasy roads, the RS4 resolves, becomes incredible. The tweakery might make the RS4 slightly less keen to turn-in and more prone to a subtle dip of bodyroll, but it keeps the wheels in touch with the tarmac, and my spine out of my nose. Having delved into the car's brain, I've set the Individual settings for aggressive gearbox action, full-fat engine and throttle response, weighty steering and comfort suspension. The Blakey Ridge soars across the top, uncommonly sunny today, flowing and long, and it's the first time I can really let the RS4 strut. The views into the valleys make you think of tiny cottages, roaring fires and writing bad novels. Which is where we picked up the Blakey Ridge on the way to Castleton and found several miles of carriageway genius. We trotted up the A1079 past Beverley and across the B1248 through Wetwang and Norton-on-Derwent, on our way to Kirkbymoorside and subsequently Hutton-le-Hole. If the fens have a limited emotional range, the North York Moors National Park is overwhelmingly passionate in comparison. It is here I start to play with the settings on the RS4's Audi drive select adaptive damper system. We hack up and across, flicker past Grimsby, over the Humber Bridge and stop for coffee. We're only roughly 60 miles into the trip. Deep puddles lurk in the potholes, the RS4 sending great walls of spray up and over hedges as it judders past, and it's only the clever quattro that prevents it bouncing its way into a cauliflower field. The RS4 in Dynamic mode is bracingly stiff, bouncing about, yanking hard through the wheel. We up the pace on some arrow-straight fen lanes connected by random 90-degree corners, and let some of the RS's 450bhp loose. If suspension has rough edges, these roads will prosecute. Up to the A16 and then across to Louth, stitching the area together through back roads straight from a testing facility - subsidence dropping the margins so that the nearside of the car is constantly working at a furious rate while the offside slouches on smooth tarmac. It's dark and cold, and there's a flutter of snow on the verges. Long, straight roads across megafields full of indeterminate winter crops. So we thumbed the key one morning at 4.30am in Stamford, Lincolnshire and headed out to see what England has to offer. TopGear's 450bhp, quattro four-wheel-drive Audi RS4 Avant is very nearly one of those things. We would need something sensible and capacious, with excellent range. Obviously, given the fact that we're doing this in winter, conditions would almost certainly be uncertain. The only slight issue being that we only have three days before we have to get back into the office, and a very long way to go. We did not race or travel at dangerous speed but took the road less travelled, just to see what was at the other end. To prove it, TopGear set out on a lap of England to seek out the most interesting 250 miles of English roads. There are roads in the UK that can provide world-class driving, epic without the need for a passport. With roads that span continents easily accessed and even the most humble of cars capable of grinding out thousands of miles without exploding, the frame for a roadtrip has expanded, making the foreign not just convenient, but preferable.īut that needn't be the case. It's a quirk of human nature, but in a world made small by distance cheaply bought, we end up blind to our own back garden, familiarity breeding local contempt.
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