Propped up by the Alston Block - an injection of magma during the Carboniferous period - the entire North Pennines feel more like one enormous mass rather than a series of individual mountains, a hulking but gently sloping behemoth scarred by glaciers and punctuated by tiny, but effective rivers and tributaries. Imagine trying to scale the shell of a gigantic Galapagos Tortoise and you'll get the idea. Each summit - if you can call them that - presents a merciless expanse, where the vegetation is sparse in the extreme, the dominant dark purple and green heather barely tall enough to brush your kneecaps.

Perhaps it's not the hills themselves that are beautiful, more the vantage point they provide; to the West is Cumbria's "Garden of Eden". To the East lies the Tyne Valley. Point your compass south and you'll gaze over Yorkshire's Stainmore Gap.

It's a landscape far more appealing from the driver's seat because such austerity provides a view of the road ahead that offers site lines as far as your retinas permit. In these socially conscious times, such vision maximises safety and reduces tension, enabling you to nibble that apex more aggressively or stay on the throttle that satisfying moment longer, safe in the knowledge you aren't ruining somebody else's day. It gives a sense of freedom to the drive that is truly liberating. Even the free-roaming woolly livestock stick out like a sore thumb.

It also helps that the roads are also great to drive - both driver and machine will be tested along this route. The tarmac is varied and twisting and a combination of cambers, gradients and surfaces is present that will exercise your dampers but never rupture your spine.

RUSH NORTH PENNINES DRIVING ROADS / ROUTE

Start - Shell Garage, Penrith, CA11 8HU

Est, travel time - 2hrs 45 mins

Length