Peugeot vs the Carlisle to Settle Railway

I WAS somewhere near Shap when the phone on the Peugeot’s Bluetooth system started ringing.

The M6 isn’t the prettiest route through this wild and isolated part of Cumbria, but it is the quickest, which is what I’d need to beat the voice on the other end of the line.

Photographer Cornelia Kaufmann was on a train winding its way north on one of Britain’s most famous railway lines, determined to prove it could get to our collective destination quicker than a car can. I might have been doing a steady 70 in calm, air-conditioned comfort, but Northern Rail’s finest had just pulled into Appleby, a good few miles ahead. This could be close.

Just over an hour earlier we’d gone to Settle, a gorgeously tranquil town in the heart of North Yorkshire, to answer a pretty much pointless question. Rail enthusiasts already know and love this picturesque spot as the starting point of the Settle and Carlisle Railway, a 72-mile-long line which threads its way through some of England’s most glorious scenery as passes past the Yorkshire Dales.

The challenge was simple - can a car get from Settle to Carlisle faster than the Settle to Carlisle train can? Discuss, using the latest in a long line of Peugeot cabriolets.

I was quietly confident I could win without resorting to cheating or breaking the speed limit, but embarrassed that I thought I’d bagged the wrong car for the job. A slight blunder on the booking form meant the CC - standing for Coupe Cabriolet, or folding metal roof in layman’s terms - label had gone missing, meaning I was expecting the snappily-titled Peugeot 207 GT THP 150 to be the company’s latest hot hatch.

Getting the French firm’s latest open-top instead isn’t something you’re likely to complain about, and once I’d got the metal origami over my head I couldn’t help but smile at how well it does the wind-in-your-hair thing.

It looks good too; it’s not as effortlessly stylish as the old 306 Cabriolet or graced with the delicate curves of either the 205 or 504 soft-tops, but when posed in front of the Ribblehead Viaduct, the railway’s stunning centrepiece, you didn’t get the feeling it was being outdone in the beauty stakes.

But for this challenge I was going to need substance rather than style, and as the Carlisle-bound train pulled into Settle station at 15.45 precisely, I raised the roof back up and set the satnav for the fastest route north. This particular Peugeot’s got 150bhp, a turbocharger and a deliciously slick five-speed gearbox at its disposal, and it was going to need both if it was going to beat the train!

My route was longer and less direct than Cornelia’s, heading towards Kendal along the A65 and then straight up the M6 to Carlisle, and on the narrow, nasty, twisty roads on the way out of Settle it seemed Peugeot might have given me the hot hatch I wanted after all. There’s no way of escaping that a cabriolet’s going to slower and heavier than its hatchback sister, but the smoothly informative feel you get from the steering wheel and the firm - but never uncomfortable - ride convinced me more than once I was actually at the helm of a mild-mannered GTI.

By the time I got to the M6, the chilly sunshine we’d enjoyed at the viaduct had turned into a dark and unrelentingly black sky, but even as the rain starting beating down I simply switched on the wipers and pounded on. I’m not a fan of the Peugeot’s too-clever computer system nestling within the central console, because the satnav wasn’t accurate enough on most occasions and the Bluetooth phone proved more hindrance than help, but with the roof up the ambience was snug enough to let you forget the worst of the Cumbrian weather.

Who won? The Peugeot of course, but by much a bigger margin than I could have hoped for. When I sauntered into Carlisle city centre and pulled up at our finishing point - the frontage of the historic railway station - the arrival from Settle was still almost fifteen minutes away. I had plenty of time to find the right platform and look smug as the train eventually chugged in, and the Peugeot had impressed me enough to prove the original point.

The little 207 isn’t perfect, particularly if you need to get anyone other than Pygmies in the rear seats or need a big boot, but it does what it’s designed to do brilliantly. I’d probably forgo the back seats and the metal roof altogether and go for the more involving drive of Mazda’s MX-5, but I really couldn’t fault this fun and feisty Peugeot.

My only regret was that my route might have been quickest but it wasn’t the best; that honour goes to the stunning Settle and Carlisle Railway, which makes up for being slower by offering simply sublime scenery. If you haven’t got a Peugeot 207 CC at your disposal, it’s well worth a try.

This story is included in the summer edition of GR8 Life Magazine, out next week.