JRR Tolkien used to blither on at some length about The Road, what you might see from it, the dangers that lurked (if only you but knew it) every time you stepped out your front door, because they don’t half go on a long way, you know, and there’s no telling where you might end up. The dear old boy may have had a point, and he surely was a whiz at conjuring an entirely imaginary universe, but he forgot one thing - the journey for most people might be about getting somewhere, about achieving a target, reaching a destination, killing some orcs or chucking a ring in a volcano, but for a motorcyclist, for the most part, the journey IS the destination. I’ve waxed lyrical about the joys of my commute many a time before now. If you happen to be heading down the A435, heading south out of Birmingham over the M42, can I talk you through it?
By way of a warm up, the run along the Portway and down Gorcott Hill does the job quite nicely, passing as it sadly does by where Mike Hailwood suffered the accident that would claim the lives of both daughter Michelle and himself. It’s fairly typical two-lane dual carriageway until you drop down the hill towards the edge of Redditch (and heaven knows you don’t want to get much closer than the edge), running down Gorcott Hill itself to a single-lane 40mph zone, but don’t worry, it’s just a brief respite before the fun starts.
Less than a mile from the end of the dual carriageway, you’ll hit a roundabout - take the first exit, which is a sharp left that turns back on the direction you approached from, like you’ve rounded Mallory’s hairpin the wrong way. The stretch for the next four miles from here is pure class, although watch out for the camera less than a mile in - you start off up a gentle slope, then into a long right-left-right sweep before driving through a gentle dip past where the sadly-missed Mappleborough Green motocross track used to be, climbing out of the dip and turning left onto an undulating straight with a camera, an easy spot unless you’re doing ridiculous speeds. Once you pass the speed camera, you’ve got three miles of exquisite, proper Nurburgring flowing sweepers through Oldberrow with no nasty surprises other than less than stellar tarmac - it’s not a motocross track by any stretch, but it gets a bit lumpy in places. It’s a great road, but riders have got hurt here before now, I know. Don’t go daft.
You’ll approach a quick right-hander with a church on the inside, and a turn towards Ullenhall on the outside - on the exit, you crest a gentle rise, look for the right turn as you begin the descent, signed for Wootton Wawen. We’ve maybe half a mile or so, through some proper country lanes, not too twisty and over a couple of crests as we head into the outskirts of the village As you head up and over the railway bridge on the way in, you hit 40 signs on the entrance to the village - have a gentle cruise down the road (past the scarey scare crow) to the T junction, then bang a right onto the A4300. The shortcut means you miss the crossroads at Henley In Arden, and I’d recommend missing those cross roads to anyone.
Wootton Wawen’s a tidy little place - there’s a short run at 50 before you drop into the village proper and a 30 zone. Heading through the village that cheeky Essex chappy ex Formula One pilot Johnny Herbert used to call home, your attention will be drawn to the wonderful Wootton Hall on your left, presumably not the previous home of the former Lotus and Benetton star, although I might be wrong about that… Once you’ve run past the hall, you head into a short 40 zone past the weir before heading under the aquaduct by the Navigation Inn - heading up the hill after the inn, you enter the 50 zone that runs all the way to Stratford four miles away, limiting what would otherwise be a really quick road – open with decent visibility, it’s a good road to overtake on with no nasty surprises, you just need to keep an eye open for junctions.
The route through Stratford isn’t the nicest – from the roundabout over the A46 into the town centre itself along the A3400 takes you through a retail desert, although the home of Shakespeare gains a lot of character once you hit the Warwick Road. Follow the signs to Banbury (past the Applegarth B&B - what used to be the exotically-named Guesthouse Ferrari), and you’re brushing past the nice bit, the glorious old bridge over the Avon – on a nice sunny weekend, you’ll see a lot of bikes through here, but that’s not our business. What we want are the roads on the other side, and I’ll tell you about those in the next thrilling installment.
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