Easyjet flight sale
EASYJET has put its flights for next autumn on sale. Bristol to Tenerife starts at £52.99pp, Gatwick to Barcelona £34.99, Liverpool to Alicante £29.99 and Newcastle to Malaga £24.99.
The launch comes as it was revealed this week that easyjet has paid £36million for all of failed Thomas Cook’s take-off and landing slots at Gatwick and Bristol.
IT might be wild and windy but if you have the wheels you can still explore the great outdoors and discover the drama down Britain’s best roads.
Cattle grind Applecross and Shieldaig, Scotland
The Pass of the Cattle – Bealach na Ba – is one of the UK’S most treacherous stretches of road. It has the steepest ascent, rising from sea level to 2,054ft at gradients of up to 20 degrees in a series of hairpin bends.
The top is vulnerable to bad weather so you do not want to start the climb unless you are confident in your driving skills and the vehicle that you are driving.
The reward is a fabulous view across to the Isle of Skye and the pink-sanded beaches of the remote village of Applecross. Directly after Applecross, the road follows a big shoreline loop, like a long balcony to the sea, before diving inland among majestic mountains.
STAY: The village of Shieldaig is a civilised sanctuary on Loch Shieldaig near the end of the shoreline loop. Here, Tigh An Eilean is a fresh and imaginative conversion of fishermen’s cottages. Doubles cost from £130, see tighaneilean.co.uk.
Baskervilles spot Across Dartmoor, Devon
The winding B3212 from Moretonhampstead to Yelverton draws a line right through the heart of Dartmoor, intersecting with some of its most chilling places.
First comes Postbridge, with the legend of a pair of hairy hands that materialise on car steering wheels, causing crashes. After that, find Grimpen Mire, the location for Sherlock Holmes mystery Hound of the Baskervilles.
And there’s Wistman’s Wood, silent and misty, where nothing but lichen seems to live among stunted oaks.
And then the gaunt shape of Princetown jail rises on the horizon, a maximum security establishment packed with bad guys.
If roads could talk, this one would make you want to sleep with the lights on.
STAY: Drop south of B3212 to Haytor Vale, with its stunning outcrop of rocks, and stay in the recently renovated Moorland Hotel, with its unusual sounding restaurant, the Tinpickle and Rhum. Doubles cost from £110, see moorlandhoteldartmoor.co.uk.
Whispering rocks Great West Road from Newbury
Today’s mundanely-named A4 – London to Bristol and Bath – was one of the nation’s first royal highways, but now most of the long-distance traffic sticks to the M4, leaving the ancient road in peace.
Here are places like Marlborough, a Georgian town that was once busy with coaching inns, after which the A4 starts to swoop through mysterious countryside, with bumps and barrows, including the huge manmade prehistoric lump that is Silbury Hill.
Silbury is a curtain-raiser to the neolithic stone circle at Avebury, which lies to the northwest. Unlike at Stonehenge, you can walk right up to the stones to see if you can hear them whispering.
White Horse territory lies beyond, with no fewer than eight of these huge figures cut into the chalk hillsides of Wiltshire.
STAY: The Dundas Arms is right by the quiet waters of the Kennet and Avon canal in a village called Kintbury – you can expect lots of peace and charm. Doubles with breakfast co cost from £90, see dundasarms.co.uk.
Zip up the pass
The Lake District’s Honister Pass
There Th is a straightforward route from Cockermouth C to Keswick via the A66. But why do that when there is a B road rollercoaster ride that th threads through dales and a remote former packhorse pa pass which holds the rainfall record for fo the UK.
The road is the B5289 and the contrasting da dales are Buttermere, wide open and lonely and fa favoured by Alfred Wainwright, and Borrowdale, co cosy and full of teashops and cottages.
The pass itself is Honister, where the old slate m mine, which has all sorts of underground ad adventures, vertical climbs and cliff edge la ladders, is about to open a 1km long zipwire. STAY: The Kirkstile Inn, by Loweswater, is a
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