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The A303: Highway to the Sun

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Fort has an eye for the quirky, the absurd, the pompous and a style that, like the road, is always on the move' Sunday Telegraph 'A lovely book. 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! For me, and I am sure many others, it has always been, and is now, if not a highway to the sun, at least a highway to a windy beach, with a good few sights along the way. Compared to the bland and brazen utility of, say, the M4, the A303 – which comes off the M3 at Basingstoke and runs down to Honiton in Devon – is a rich and magical road. 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 have travelled the A303 many times but not given too much thought to the history around it except for Stonehenge. years ago, the bluestones of Stonehenge were conveyed west from the river Avon along a small section of its route. We knew the landmarks that measured its progress: maybe a pub sign, a red post-box, an old, sagging stone wall weighed down by ivy … Each delivered the same message. This is nothing more than a vanity project, which would be a complete waste of time and money, and would create far more problems and confusion than it would solve.

Don't go looking for a travel book, this is more of a history, and, at times, even a political rant. For those that don't know it, the A303 forms part of a major longer route from London to Penzance, except that it only goes about a third of the way, doing the bit between Basingstoke and Honiton. Traveling down the road in an ancient Mini Traveller car from the Sixties, he came across as someone prone to mugging in front of the camera for no apparent reason: what mattered was not so much the sites, but his reaction to them. But journeys embarked upon full of the joys of the season all too often grind into a standstill of rage and bitterness before Hampshire even gives way to Wiltshire.

Ilminster to Honiton would probably be non-primary, but would remain an important route in it's own right.Where Fort's film surprised with its eccentricity, Britain's Most Wanted battered you with its dullness. I'm talking Iain Sinclair and Andy Sharp and Gareth E Rees and Paul Devereux, many others of that ilk. So the A30 would terminate on the A375, only to mysteriously reappear some 25 miles later having multiplexed with the A375, A35, and M5?

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