The A303: Highway to the Sun

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The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. It was funny to see the 303 compared favourably to the meandering A30, which, as a biker, I'd pick every time.

Rather an apt description of the road that leads to my beloved and regularly gallantly failing cricket team. It is, as one reviewer noted, a plain man's state-of-the-nation book – though one ignoring the major conurbations. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.I've spent enough time driving from London to the south-west to know that A303: Highway to the Sun (BBC4) was in breach of the trade descriptions act.

I have always thought when the A30 Honiton to Exeter upgrade was built the A303 should have gone all the way to Exeter given the route was 80% dual cariageway. The A303 officially dates back to 1937, when a series of existing roads was rebranded and given this single number. So I have an emotional attachment to it for many of the reasons Tom Ford highlighted in his introduction. We try to add new providers constantly but we couldn't find an offer for "A303: Highway to the Sun" online. Hearst UK is the trading name of the National Magazine Company Ltd, 30 Panton Street, Leicester Square, London, SW1Y 4AJ.It’s not a likely location for a dramatic road movie (try freewheeling through a traffic jam) but it has a domestic Ealing comedy character all its own. I felt it was a shame that he didn't actually make more of his love of rivers and fishing, as he was writing at his best when he veered toward this topic. He took early retirement in 2000, just before the publication of his social history of lawns and lawn-mowing, The Grass is Greener. Wincanton is one of the few towns to be twinned with a fictional place, Ankh-Morpork from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.

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. I'm not aware of huge numbers of people getting terminally lost around Newcott because the A30 turns off to the right and they don't.His object is to reveal the special beauty of the landscape, particularly Salisbury Plain and Stonehenge (pictured).

The author provides a potted history of strategic landmarks and towns along the route, from early Britons to Saxons, Romans and Normans; famous legends surrounding King Arthur (Cadbury Castle alleged to be Camelot) and Stonehenge; the clashes between the political will of various governments, the motorists and the environmentalists that have caused such a 'mish-mash' of road development generally and how this has impacted on the A303; but also has taught me things that I never knew, such as the use of water meadows and the role of the Drowner and the use of flocks of Wiltshire Horn sheep, the meat and fleece of which were both at best average, merely as providers of fertiliser for the arable crop fields by the use of their dung!

Having built a new road from Ilminster to the M5, the HA and local councils are likely to want to discourage through traffic from using the old route. What Tom Fort has done in this excellent primer is to combine English history and myth with a host of nerdish facts about the road, some cultural analysis and not a little literary reflection to boot. The experts assumed an inferior position; Fort either interrupted them or responded to their observations with gales of forced laughter. I have travelled the A303 many times but not given too much thought to the history around it except for Stonehenge.