The best driving roads in the UK

Britain numbers its roads by importance. An A road carries traffic between towns, a B road links the places the A roads skip, and below those sit C roads, whose numbers are not even printed on the signs. On this page the order runs almost the other way. Most of the fourteen are B roads or C roads, and the highest scoring of them, Bealach na Bà at 57, is a C road.

It earns it. The Bealach na Bà leaves the shore of Loch Kishorn and gains 627 metres to the pass above Applecross, on gradients of one in five, with 4 hairpins stacked below the summit and a single lane the whole way.

Scotland has ten of the top twenty, most of them on the west side: Applecross, Assynt, Ardnamurchan and the Isle of Mull. Mull appears twice on the same road. The B8073 is scored as two halves, one dropping into Dervaig through tight hairpins and the other following the shore of Loch Tuath round to Ulva Ferry.

Wales has four on this page, at either end of the country. In the south are mountain roads: the Black Mountain Pass above Llangadog, and the climbs out of the Rhondda and the Afan Valley. In the north, the B4391 crosses the Berwyns from Bala to Llangynog. England’s two on this page also sit at opposite ends of the country, the Atlantic road from Padstow to Newquay in Cornwall and the A686 across the North Pennines.

Because so much of this list is a single lane wide, one practical note. On the Highland roads, passing places are for letting traffic by in both directions, including the car behind you. Use them and these roads stay the pleasure they are for everyone on them.

Ask a British driver for their favourite road and the answer is usually a B road within an hour of home, found by taking a wrong turn once. The map is built to make that less of an accident. Open it where you live and it ranks the roads around you by the same measure as this page, so finding yours becomes a search rather than a lucky detour. Then get out there, in the car or on the bike.