10 of the best driving roads in the UK and Ireland.
Published 3 November 2026Cambr9 minute read
The highest-scoring driving road in the UK and Ireland is the R115 Military Road and Sally Gap, a 26-mile crossing of the Wicklow Mountains that scores 89.3 out of 100 in Cambr. It is one of 22 roads across Britain and Ireland that reach S tier, our top rating.
Below are ten of those 22, counting down to number one. The other twelve are in the app.
These ten earned their places by scoring. Cambr measures every road on corners, climb, scenery, flow, width and surface, and road type, then weighs that against thirty years of what the motoring press has written. Fame and scenery count only where they show up in those numbers. Here’s how the scoring works in full.
Assynt does not look like the rest of Scotland. The mountains here stand alone rather than in ranges, ancient lumps of Torridonian sandstone rising straight out of bog and water, and the road threads between them on its way to the Kylesku bridge.
What makes it drive well is that it was built late and built properly. This is a wide, well-surfaced two-lane road in a part of the Highlands where almost everything else is single track with passing places, so you can actually commit to it. The corners flow into each other and the sight lines are enormous.
Very little else is out here, which is most of the appeal. You will see more deer than cars.
18. A57 Snake Pass
Peak District, England · 79.0 · 17.1 miles
The Snake is the one most people in the north west learn first, because it is the road between Manchester and Sheffield and there is no way around it.
The climb out of Glossop puts you on open moor for several miles with nothing either side. Long exposed sweeps instead of tight corners, and enough elevation change that the weather at the top is routinely a different season from the bottom. The road closes in snow most winters and occasionally for landslips, because the hillside it is cut into keeps moving.
This is a commuter road that happens to be brilliant, which means traffic. Early is the answer, and so is accepting that you will be behind something at some point.
16. B6295 Cowshill to Allenheads
North Pennines, England · 80.9 · 15.3 miles
Almost nobody outside County Durham and Northumberland has driven this, and that is the point of it.
The B6295 climbs out of Weardale at Cowshill, goes over the top, and drops into Allenheads on the other side. High, open, empty moorland the whole way, with the old lead-mining country either side of you and a road surface considerably better than it has any right to be.
Four S-tier roads sit inside this one small patch of the North Pennines, which is the densest concentration of top-rated road anywhere in Britain and Ireland. If you only ever drive one part of this list, make it this one, because you can link all four in an afternoon.
15. B6276 Middleton-in-Teesdale to Brough
North Pennines, England · 81.2 · 13.9 miles
The neighbour, and the better of the two if you had to choose.
From Middleton-in-Teesdale the road climbs onto some of the highest and emptiest moorland in England, runs across the top, then drops into the Eden Valley at Brough. Long views in every direction and very little to interrupt them.
Like the B6295 it benefits from being nobody’s commute. The traffic measurement on both of these roads is as low as anything we score, and on a weekday you can have the whole crossing to yourself.
13. A82 Glencoe
Highlands, Scotland · 84.5 · 26.5 miles
The most photographed road in Scotland, and the score holds up anyway.
The run across Rannoch Moor and down through the glen is fast and flowing, a wide A-road with long committed curves beneath the Three Sisters and the Aonach Eagach ridge. The scenery made the reputation. The driving earns it: you can carry speed through here, which is rarer in the Highlands than the photographs suggest.
Its problem is everyone else. In July you will spend an hour behind a motorhome and leave disappointed. In October on a weekday morning it is one of the great drives in Europe, and the light is better.
10. B3306 St Ives to St Just
Cornwall, England · 86.0 · 13.6 miles
The highest-scoring road in the south of England, and completely unlike everything else on this list.
The road runs along the granite coast from St Ives towards Land’s End, tight and walled and exposed and slow. There is no outright speed anywhere on it. What there is instead is a constant rhythm of corners between stone walls with the Atlantic directly beside you, and the kind of road surface that tells you exactly what the car is doing.
The score ties it with Buttertubs Pass in the Yorkshire Dales at 86.0, which is about as different a road as Britain can offer. That the scoring puts them level is one of the more satisfying results in the database.
8. A821 Duke’s Pass
Trossachs, Scotland · 86.5 · 11.9 miles
Twelve miles, and more corners than roads three times its length.
Duke’s Pass climbs out of Aberfoyle through forest, over the top, and down to Loch Achray, and it does not stop turning for any of it. Its corner score is a perfect 25 out of 25, the only road in the database to manage it. The flow score is nearly as high, and that pairing is the whole point. The corners link into each other instead of interrupting each other.
Everything good in Scotland is north of here, and this is the road that starts it.
5. A537 Cat & Fiddle
Peak District, England · 87.3 · 7.6 miles
Seven and a half miles, the shortest road on this list, and one of the best-known stretches of tarmac in the country.
The Macclesfield to Buxton run is a sequence of sweeping bends across open moor, with cambers that shift underneath you mid-corner. That camber is what makes it hard to drive well. It has been written about by more or less everyone, and it is close enough to Manchester and Sheffield that a lot of people have driven it a lot of times.
The whole thing is average-speed camera’d end to end, and has been for years, for reasons that are not hard to work out. Cambr scores camera coverage against a road, and the Cat and Fiddle still reaches fifth, which tells you what the rest of it is doing.
3. A39 Porlock to Lynton
Exmoor, England · 87.8 · 11.5 miles
Porlock Hill is a 1-in-4 climb with hairpins, and that is the first thing this road does to you.
After that it settles onto the moor and runs high above the Bristol Channel to Lynton, a mix of steep gradients, tight corners and sudden open stretches where the sea appears on your right several hundred feet below. There is a toll road alternative up the hill if you would rather not do the 1-in-4, and plenty of people take it.
No road in Cambr holds a higher editorial score. Every publication we track has written about it, which is unusual, and they all broadly agree.
1. R115 Military Road & Sally Gap
Wicklow, Ireland · 89.3 · 25.8 miles
The highest-scoring road in the UK and Ireland, and it is not in Britain at all.
The Military Road was built by the British Army after 1798 to get soldiers into the Wicklow Mountains, which is why it runs where no sensible road would: straight across open bog, over the top, nothing either side. For long stretches it is almost dead straight with the horizon a mile away and nothing between you and it. Then it reaches the Sally Gap and starts to twist.
An hour from Dublin, and it feels like the far north of Scotland. That combination of accessibility and emptiness is rare enough that it beats everything in Britain.
The other twelve
Ten is a post. The S tier has 22 roads in it, and the ones that did not make this list include the highest-scoring road in Britain.
That is A686 Hartside Pass at 88.9, second overall, a Pennine climb from Penrith to Alston that also opens the highest-rated driving route in the country. The rest: R574 Healy Pass, Blakey Ridge, B4391 Blaenau to Bala, Buttertubs Pass, B4391 Bala to Llangynog, A4069 Black Mountain Pass, B6255 Ingleton to Hawes, B4560 Beaufort to Llangynidr, Elan Valley Road, B6278 Consett to Middleton in Teesdale and B4501 across Cerrigydrudion Moor.
All 22 are ranked and mapped in Cambr.
What the S tier says about where Britain’s best roads actually are
Lay the full 22 out by country and the result is not what anyone expects.
11England
6Wales
3Scotland
2Ireland
England has 11. Wales has 6. Scotland has 3. Ireland has 2.
Scotland having three is the one that will start arguments, so here is the explanation. Two things are going on. The first is that a great many Highland roads are single track with passing places, and however spectacular they are, a road you cannot commit to scores badly on width and flow. The Bealach na Bà is the clearest case: the algorithm rates it the single best road in the entire database, and it lands in A tier rather than S. The second is that S tier requires editorial backing, and the press has written far more about accessible English and Welsh roads than about anything north of Inverness.
Wales is the opposite story. Six S-tier roads from a country that is a fraction of England’s size, and three of those six sit within about twenty-five miles of each other around the Berwyn range and the Evo Triangle. Per square mile it is the best driving country in Britain by a distance.
And four of England’s eleven are in one small part of the North Pennines, between Alston, Middleton-in-Teesdale and Allenheads. You can drive all four in an afternoon, and almost nobody does.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best driving road in the UK?
A686 Hartside Pass, between Penrith and Alston, is the highest-scoring road in Britain in Cambr at 88.9 out of 100. The highest-scoring road in the UK and Ireland overall is the R115 Military Road and Sally Gap in County Wicklow at 89.3.
How many S-tier roads are there?
22 across Britain and Ireland. S tier means a combined score of 77 or above. A tier is 67 to 76.9 and B tier is 55 to 66.9.
What is the best driving road in Scotland?
A821 Duke’s Pass in the Trossachs at 86.5, which has the highest corner score of any road in the database. Scotland has three S-tier roads: Duke’s Pass, the A82 through Glencoe, and the A894 from Loch Assynt to Kylesku.
What is the best driving road in Wales?
B4391 from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Bala at 87.1. Wales has six S-tier roads, more per square mile than anywhere else in Britain.
Why isn’t the Bealach na Bà on the list?
It scores 75.9, which is A tier. The algorithm rates it the highest of any road we score, and the editorial side of the score holds it out of S tier. It is a remarkable drive either way.
Are these roads good on a motorbike?
Yes. The scoring measures the road rather than the vehicle. Riders should note that several of these have single-track or narrow sections where gravel collects in the passing places after rain.
Can I navigate these in the app?
Yes, all 22 are in Cambr. The 20 in Britain have turn-by-turn navigation, and the app will route you along them rather than around them. Routing in Ireland is on the way.
All 22, ranked and mapped.
Plus every other scored road in Britain and Ireland, and 46 curated drives built on top of them.
