Fosse Way

Saturday lunchtime finds the happy travellers (well fed and “watered”) needing to get from south of Leicester to Cheddar in Somerset; any route finder would have sent us down 4 different stretches of motorway but we had a “plan”. Hairy nephew had suggested using the Fosse Way to get down to the M4 at Chippenham as he has motorcycled down it on a number of occasions.

The Fosse Way was originally built by the Romans and ran from Exeter to Lincoln and formed the Northern barrier to the Roman Empire, the section from Lincoln to Ilchester runs for 182 miles and deviates no more than 6 miles from a straight line.

I was familiar with the top section ( down from the A5 to South of the M40) from years gone by but had forgotten what a blast it is to drive on long straight roads that follow the contours of the land. There are some awkward crossings to be found here when the road intersects with major roads and visibility is not great, however the long straights, pretty villages and country views more than make up for that.

The rest of the journey did not disappoint, more views and interesting sights (the exterior wall of some country house that must have run for at least two miles beside the road outside Fossebridge). We were lucky that the traffic levels were light and we did not encounter a single large lorry on the journey so were able to make pretty good progress. The route is very popular with motorcyclists who are able to use the long straights to clear traffic at speed, one pair went screaming past and then braked for a speed camera before we could hear them winding up the throttles after they cleared it.

All in all a very pleasant driving experience, so good that we used it on Sunday to return North as far as the M40.

This site has some photographs of the road and gives some background.