The A303: Highway to the Sun

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On leaving Oxford he went to work as a reporter at the Slough Observer and the Slough Evening Mail before joining the BBC in 1978 where he worked in the BBC Radio newsroom in London for 22 years. This is a book about a road for chrissakes and unlike America, with its Mother Roads and California Highways, the UK just doesn't cut it.

In this fully revised and updated edition, Tom Fort gives voice to the stories this road has to tell, from the bluestones of Stonehenge, Roman roads and drovers paths to turnpike tollhouses, mad vicars, wicked Earls and solstice seekers, the history, geography and culture of this road tells a story of an English way of life. Tom Fort's book, named for a well-used English road, is a smoother ride: elegantly written, with a dry humour and an eyebrow raised at the failed "smart solutions" of transport ministers. a friendly bed-and-breakfast [which provided] fig jam with my toast" [p274]) and some didactic asides (I didn't know that the Cretaceous period was named after the Latin for chalk [p41], for example).The A303 is one of the essential routes of English motoring, promising to whisk the traveller towards the green and honeyed lands of Somerset and the far west to a world of holidays and escape (although these journeys all too often grind to a standstill. What we got was a lot of plain-clothes policemen hanging around waiting for someone to ring them with a tip-off before nipping off to Victoria coach station to pick up a man wanted for murder abroad who was saying goodbye to his girlfriend. Fort's book concludes with a visit to Annie's Tea Bar, situated at the very end of the A303 where it rejoins its "old rival", the A30, where he enjoys a full English breakfast and a chat with the proprietor, Annie. But journeys embarked upon full of the joys of the season all too often grind into a standstill of rage and bitterness before Hampshire even gives way to Wiltshire. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

The story of transport: cars, roads, the costs of these, and in particular the politics, are boring and poorly handled though. An interesting and enjoyable read, although at times a bit disjointed - nevertheless, still happy to rate it 7/10. He was very pleased and intrigued to receive it as a Christmas gift, and looked forward to reading it. Loved the presenter, although I'm not sure I'd be too impressed if I was driving behind him with when he was leaving the road; the Devon truck stop girls when faced with the scenario of what would happen when asked for a Latte; and the roadkill guy and the warm pheasant he was bringing home for his wife to put in a casserole. It was stop/start from the Ilminster bypass to halfway down Rawridge Hill, then 40 to Honiton and the D2.The TV show that drew my attention to this book is a muted highlights reel by comparison but still better than most things to be seen on the idiot box. Minimum 8 hours, even overnight, so we used to arrive fresh as daisies whilst Mum and Dad were knackered. What I'd really have liked is a map, telling me where to find the historical tales in the text, so I could shove the book in the glovebox and refer to it en route, safely pulled over of course. At last someone has celebrated the romance of the British road' Guardian The A303 is more than a road. Where Fort's film surprised with its eccentricity, Britain's Most Wanted battered you with its dullness.

Scandal-lovers will be thrilled by the rape and sodomy charges against the Second Earl of Castlehaven in 1631. For those who will never drive the A303, it explains beautifully how our road system came to be the way that it is. Nostalgia is a warm bath - pleasant enough but shortly it cools to tepid and you're forced to make the choice to get out, shivering, and towel off.The experts assumed an inferior position; Fort either interrupted them or responded to their observations with gales of forced laughter. Rather an apt description of the road that leads to my beloved and regularly gallantly failing cricket team. I loved the bits in this book about the villages and countryside, and I pretty much enjoyed the history and old tales of strange country folk and unusual goings on from various times in history.

It crammed full of facts and stories about the people and places along this route and often delves into the politics of various government road building policies. I would guess that, like roadkill, this kind of programme is an acquired taste but, after the numbing predictability of most factual TV, there has to be a place for the eclectic. Many of us will have travelled the length of the A303 and have memories of it (fond or otherwise), and this book definitely does a great job of creating a sense of nostalgia but weaving it between what is a clever way of presenting historical facts of the road and local areas. So the A30 would terminate on the A375, only to mysteriously reappear some 25 miles later having multiplexed with the A375, A35, and M5?Wincanton is one of the few towns to be twinned with a fictional place, Ankh-Morpork from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. But I did not know a very great deal else that is here, and it is the millennia-spanning nature of the book that gives it its charm and point. The flesh-and-blood example of progress v nature here resides in the case of the great bustard, the world's heaviest flying bird and so, therefore, one of the most impractical, whose attempts to re-establish itself on Salisbury Plain, courtesy of the admirably quixotic Great Bustard Group, would seem to be doomed.