B4494 Newbury to Wantage

[Tuff Noodell]

Go early in the morning or at a quiet time of day.

A road with lots of bends, dips and cambers. Drive it both ways - its so easy to string several corners together to make it huge fun.
Watch out for the last few corners into Newbury - road narrow and dangerous.

Spectacular high speed straights on top of the downs looking over the Thames Valley.

[thub]

This was part of my route to work for 10+ years (Wantage to M4) so I got to know it pretty well. However, the surface is getting really bad in places and it can flood near to Leckhampstead now that the local farmers have worked their magic with the hedgerows.

[plotloss]

I think that is one of the roads that I did during my RoSPA training. Enormous fun!

Matt.

[thub]

Sorry - my earlier post comes across as negative. It's a great road, though be warned about the points I made above.

Memories
- doing xxx on the straight on top of the downs and the car following moving out to see if he could overtake. What was he in?
- being able to drive from Wantage to the Chieveley turn (10+ miles) only having to brake once - it's all in the throttle control, y'know.

[Tuff Noodell]

Thanks for the memories guys,

I also have nearly become a cropper with the flooding at Leckhampsted. It is fairly easy to spot though.

The other hazard to watch out for is wildlife. The whole route is very rural and rabbits, pheasants etc abound - the most memorable was a deer going over my windscreen at 30mph - the car didn't look very pretty after that episode!!!

[zebedee]

I bet it looked prettier than the deer!

[James]

I know what you mean about it deteriorating. I've been an occasional driver along that stretch for the last 4 years (any time I have to go up towards Oxford). In that time it's deteriorated noticably. The first few times along there were excellent (first in a Chimaera, then a Cerbie). Now the average speed must be a good 10mph lower.