Great Roads: the five, and who each one is for

Buying a road is the safest thing you can do for a rider whose machine you do not know. They have either ridden it, in which case it is a memory, or they have not, in which case it is a plan. Both hang. Pick by the ground rather than by the picture and you will get it right.

Scotland, and the long way round

Applecross Pass is the Bealach na Ba at dawn, hairpins stacked below and the sea loch silver behind. It is the one riders plan a week around rather than a Sunday, and it is the obvious pick for somebody with a trip still ahead of them. North Coast 500 takes the coastal cliff run through sea haze on Scotland's far edge: the long way round, drawn as a route rather than as a viewpoint, which suits the tourer who plans in January and rides in June.

The Lakes, and a badge rather than a view

Hardknott Pass is slate green and low cloud, one rider, one in three, no guardrail. It is not a pretty picture and it is not meant to be. Anyone who has taken a bike over it wants the fact recorded, not softened, and that is what this one does.

The Peaks, and the local ride

Cat and Fiddle catches golden hour on the moorland sweepers between Buxton and Macclesfield, the corner that never ends. Snake Pass runs autumn larches into a copper corridor with one headlamp threading the long shadow. These two are the pair: same county, different weather, and they hang together as one piece more convincingly than any two others in the range.

The facts behind the five

The paintings are compositions; the roads are measurable, and the measurements are quoted where a source publishes them. The Bealach na Ba rises from sea level at Applecross to 630 m in about six kilometres, and is the third highest mountain pass in Scotland (source: Wikipedia's Bealach na Bà page, read 8 September 2026). Hardknott shares the title of steepest road in England with Rosedale Chimney Bank, at a maximum gradient of 1 in 3, about 33% (source: Wikipedia's Hardknott Pass page, read 8 September 2026). Snake Pass carries the A57 over 1,680 feet, 510 m, in the Derbyshire Pennines (source: Wikipedia's Snake Pass page, read 8 September 2026). The North Coast 500 is the route its own operators describe as "just over 500 miles (516 to be exact)" of coastal Scotland (source: northcoast500.com, read 8 September 2026). For the Cat and Fiddle, the fact worth stating is the one on the sign: it is the A537 between Buxton and Macclesfield.

Five more to plan before we paint them

The range is five roads; the country holds more. Llanberis Pass in Snowdonia, Kirkstone and the Buttertubs on either side of the Pennines, the Black Mountain stretch of the A4069, and Cheddar Gorge. Each gets a painting when it earns one; none gets one by committee.

These are the ones for canvas

If any artwork here belongs on a woven surface rather than behind plexiglass, it is these. They are landscapes with weather in them, painted rather than drawn, and a canvas gives that a depth a sheet of paper flattens. It also removes the glass, which matters because a landscape usually ends up on the wall a window is pointing at.

They work perfectly well on paper too, and a framed print in natural wood suits the warmer three. The poster page has the stock and the sizes.

If the road matters more than the machine, this is the whole series. If the machine matters more, the race-day posters and the style pages are the other two ways in, and gifts for bikers works through which road suits which rider.

Written by Craig Fearn, Throttlefolio. Last updated 8 September 2026.