Planning a motorhome road trip: routes your vehicle actually fits

A motorhome turns the journey into the holiday, but Britain's best-known roads were not built with 3.2 metres of height in mind. Plan around your dimensions and the country opens up.

Know your numbers cold

Height including aerials and boxes, width including mirrors, length, and weight. Write them on a card by the wheel. Most grief comes from forgetting the top metre exists; UK bridge strikes run to five a day.

Famous routes that work well

• The NC500: made for motorhomes, if you drive it courteously: use passing places to let queues by, book sites ahead, never overnight in passing places or field gateways.
• The Snow Roads: wide enough throughout, spectacular, with good stopovers in Braemar and Tomintoul.
• The Causeway Coast: a proper A-road the whole way; ideal first tour.
• The Cotswolds: gentle, with the caveat of narrow village cores at peak times.

Famous roads to skip

• Hardknott and Wrynose: absolutely not. Take the A595 coast road instead.
• The Bealach na Ba: signed against large vehicles for good reason; use the Shieldaig road to Applecross.
• Cheddar Gorge's upper lanes and most "shortcut" single-tracks: if a route saves ten minutes on a map, it usually costs an hour in reversing.

Plan stops like a pro

Aim for arrival by mid-afternoon, keep driving days under four hours of wheel time, and always have a plan B stopover. In Scotland, wild overnighting in a motorhome is tolerated in some areas and resented in others: use designated stopovers where the locals have provided them.