Nik Berg, longtime fixture of Hagerty UK and our US site, has written (and self-published) a book! The paperback is on Amazon for £15.99.
This book should come with a warning: May cause impulsive booking of airline tickets. What else would one do, after reading about 101 of the world’s best road trips?
Detour 101: 101 of the World’s Best Road Trips, by Nik Berg, celebrates the freedom of driving and the delight of the journey. Thoroughly researched and filled with aerial photography, this 222-page book is part tour guide, part love letter to the world’s most famous roads and the landscapes they access.
Unless you live in Antarctica, at least one of these routes is on your home continent. The majority of the routes are in the UK and in the United States, but South America, Africa (both north and south of the Sahara), the Middle East, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada are all represented. Whether you prefer asphalt or gravel, coasts or deserts, moors or mountains, there’s something for you here.
The book is organised by continent, then country. Each route gets a two-page spread, one for a photo and another for text, along with start and finish points, distance of the trip in miles, and an abbreviated URL that, typed into your browser, will pull up the route on Google Maps. You can easily share it with friends or send it to your phone. URLs are generally awkward in print, but, in an age that most people navigate with their phones and cringe at the thought of asking locals for directions, these links are welcome.
You don’t have to own a sports car to enjoy the trips in this book – Berg, though an auto journalist by trade, is intentionally agnostic about what vehicle you choose. A few routes moonlight as race tracks (or did: Rheims, Monte Carlo, Isle of Man), and others are bucket-list roads for driving aficionados (Tail of the Dragon in the US, the Stelvio Pass in Italy), but not all of the road trips in Detour 101 are full of hairpins and on-camber Sweepers: some are mostly straight (Chatteris to Three Holes in Norfolk; Swakopmund to Windhoek in Namibia; Silo Art Trail in Victoria, Australia). Many are slow affairs, either because of speed limits (Cheddar Gorge in Somerset; Jacob’s Ladder in Tasmania) or traffic (Amalfi Coast, the Grand Prix circuit in Monaco) and are best enjoyed as scenic ambles. Others are frequented by mountain bikers, cyclists, campers, or tourists – including many that pass through famous filming locations (the A82 in Ballchulish, Scotland, where Skyfall was filmed, or Ouarzazate in Morocco, which hosted Gladiator and Game of Thrones) or the homes of celebrities (Graceland in Tennessee, or Chirnside, childhood home of Jim Clark).
The routes are most important because of the journey they take you on, not the vehicle you take (although, for the routes in the Australian outback or through the salt flats of the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, Berg emphasizes the need for a 4×4). Berg first experienced some of these roads in a humdrum rental car; others, in a tiny convertible sports car that looks like it belongs in the 1930s.
Nik Berg’s “lifelong love affair with road trips” began when he was seven years old, in the back of an old Citroën DS Safari that his dad drove 24 hours from their home in London to the south of France – with no overnight stop. Automotive journalism has been his trade since his teens, when he worked at Auto Express magazine. From there he went to BBC, where he helped launch Top Gear magazine. He spent eight years freelancing for Car and Top Gear, worked as the global editor for all of Mazda’s print and digital magazines for nearly nine, founded an Editorial and Brand Content consultancy in 2014, and currently works for Hagerty as its European correspondent. In 2019, he also founded detour-roadtrips.com, the genesis for this book.
Cars inspire us to do many things – to curse at them during a particularly frustrating DIY job, sure, but also to embrace the journey as much as the destination. Berg clearly understands this, though he doesn’t let joie de vivre prevent him from noting that certain legendary roads may be more trouble than Instagram would suggest. A few European passes, for instance, are so well known that they aren’t much fun to drive, even if your only goal is to admire the scenery. Others are so treacherous that they require careful preparation and nerves of steel.
Berg thinks of everything, including how a given road came to be and what flora and fauna you may see along the way. If there’s a famous film site, or museum, or factory, it’s noted. Many routes feature places to eat, and not just convenience stores where you might find a boxed sandwich with limp lettuce. There are cafes and diners and fish ‘n’ chip shops and breweries and wineries – to enjoy after the drive, of course – and a place in the Florida Keys that serves conch fritters. (When in Rome . . .) The more remote, off-road routes always include the best (or last) places to stop for fuel and supplies. Berg is always spying out a photo op, especially when it’s on a pullout away from the street itself. If a road has a particularly strong (or weak) police presence or an unusually low speed limit, Detour 101 diligently notes that. For many of these routes, especially those at high elevation, weather is not simply an inconvenience but a potential danger, and many routes are seasonally closed – Berg notes all of these, including tolls and fees when they apply.
Read this book to expand your experience of your home country, to structure a trip abroad, or simply to dream.
