This beats the train any day

YOU don’t get the sort of fun I’ve just had by sticking to the motorway.

I’ve just headed home after a weekend in Carlisle but rather than being boring and sticking to the M6 I’ve had a ball blitzing the back roads. I already knew the A6 was a cracking driver's road from my student days of nursing scooters along it, but when you bring a speedy set of wheels to its sweeping curves you know you’re in for an enjoyable afternoon!

The M6, which traverses the same North/South route across the edges of the Lake District, might get you between the North West and Scotland quicker, but I urge anyone with Castrol R surging through their veins to give its older, trickier and twistier sister a try. It’s a cocktail of hairpin curves, steep drops and wide open spaces, and an instant master class in the joys of motoring. Even when the Life On Cars Renault 5 made it to Shap Summit, the highest point, I was smiling the smile of someone who loves his cars.

I love coming to Cumbria because so many of its roads make for sublime driving experiences, and that’s why I’m looking forward to answering an otherwise pointless question in my next feature for GR8 Life magazine so much. Which will get you between Settle and Carlisle faster – a car or one of Britain’s most famous railways? Discuss, using the help of Peugeot’s latest hot hatch.

You might think the Peugeot 207 GT THP 150 would walk it, but the estimate journey times are strikingly close (car: one hour, 30 minutes, train: one hour, 33 minutes). A single set of roadworks or the wrong kind of snow on the line could throw the entire race either way. The road and the railway also take completely different routes, as you can see here:

It really is anyone’s guess as to who’ll win, but I won’t be too downhearted if I lose. I’m lucky enough to have driven a Mini over the Llanberris Pass, threaded a Morgan 4/4 through the leafy lanes of West Lancashire and been scared by a V8 Cobra on the back streets of Southport, but this journey across almost every kind of road in Yorkshire and Cumbria should make a really memorable one.

So, who do you think is going to win?

David Simister will be talking about the race when he appears on Dune FM's Live From Studio One show this Friday (March 27) on Dune 107.9FM, from 6pm.

Find out who wins on Life On Cars later this month and read the full feature in the Summer edition of GR8 Life magazine, due out in July.