MOTORCYCLE TRAVEL IN United Kingdom

Riding the North Coast 500 by motorcycle means tracing Scotland's entire northern coastline in 830 km, from Inverness Castle heading west, hugging fjord-like sea lochs, until the loop closes back along the east coast.

The route launched in 2015 as a Highlands tourism initiative, and its impact was immediate: in its first year alone it brought 29,000 extra visitors and 9 million pounds in tourist spending; by 2025 the full circuit was generating around 100 million pounds and supporting more than 1,300 jobs in the region.

It runs through fishing villages like Ullapool and Durness, over the Kylesku Bridge, and across the Bealach na Bà itself, ending (or starting) at John o' Groats, the northernmost inhabited point of mainland Britain. For any rider searching "motorcycle route United Kingdom", the NC500 is, without question, the first result.

Climbing the Bealach na Bà by motorcycle means tackling the greatest ascent of any road in the United Kingdom: it rises from sea level in Applecross to 626 meters in just 6 km of climbing, with gradients touching 20%, engineered almost like an Alpine pass.

The Scottish Gaelic name means "pass of the cattle": for centuries it was the drovers' road used to herd cattle to markets in Muir of Ord and as far as London. The current road was finished in 1822, after four years of construction 75% funded by government grants.

In 2025, The Telegraph called it "a worldwide motoring phenomenon", and today, alongside the NC500 it forms part of, it's the section that international motorcycle travelers search for most specifically when planning a bike trip through Scotland.

Riding Glen Coe and Rannoch Moor by motorcycle along the A82 is, for much of Britain's biking community, the stretch that best sums up the Highlands: a glen barely 700 meters wide, hemmed in by mountains that were once an active supervolcano some 420 million years ago.

The current road improves on the one General George Wade opened in 1724 and Thomas Telford refined in the 19th century; the modern diversion across Rannoch Moor wasn't finished until 1933. Travel writer Simon Warren called it "the most beautiful and spectacular location in the whole of Britain."

It's a short stretch -barely 45 km- but it packs in Scotland's sharpest transition: from dramatic mountain pass to wooded valley in minutes, without a single filler kilometer.

The Cat and Fiddle Road by motorcycle is, arguably, the most-mentioned stretch of road on any British motorcycling forum: 12 km of the A537 between Buxton and Macclesfield, climbing to 520 meters at the Cat and Fiddle Inn, England's second-highest pub.

Its fame has a dark side: between 2007 and 2011, 44 serious or fatal crashes were recorded on this stretch of barely 12 km, and since 2001 it has accumulated 264 casualties, roughly 70% of them motorcyclists. A 2008 survey named it Britain's most dangerous road.

Authorities invested over 1.7 million pounds in average-speed cameras, reduced limits to 50 mph, and widened the carriageway; by 2015 it had dropped out of the country's top 10 most dangerous roads. Today, alongside Long Hill and Cat and Fiddle, it remains the vertex of a curve triangle every biker in the north of England knows by heart.

Riding the Snake Pass by motorcycle means crossing, via the A57, the highest point between Sheffield and Manchester -510 meters of open moorland that a 2008 Caterham Cars survey named "the best driving road in the UK."

It opened in 1821, funded by the Sheffield and Glossop turnpike, and was at the time the highest turnpike road in England; the tolls were abolished in 1870, and today it's simply the A57.

It's also one of England's roads with the deepest motorcycling tradition: Derbyshire Police launched a dedicated campaign in 2012 aimed at motorcyclists, the group at greatest risk of a fatal crash on this stretch, due to the combination of blind curves on open moorland and high speeds.

Crossing Hardknott and Wrynose by motorcycle means tackling, back to back, the two steepest passes in all of England: Hardknott reaches a gradient of 1-in-3 (33%), comparable to the hardest mountain stages of the Tour de France.

The Romans already crossed here around AD 110, on a road linking the coastal fort at Ravenglass with the garrisons at Ambleside and Kendal; the modern road wasn't paved until after World War II, once wartime tank training had destroyed the earlier surface. A 1911 cycling guide already described it as "difficult going west, cruel coming east."

At the summit of Wrynose still stands the Three Shire Stone, marking the historic meeting point of the old counties of Cumberland, Lancashire and Westmorland -three counties that now share a single 14-km crossing.

Crossing the Buttertubs Pass by motorcycle means riding through the Yorkshire Dales via one of England's most photographed roads, named for the limestone potholes up to 20 meters deep -the "buttertubs"-, where, according to local tradition, farmers lowered their butter on ropes to keep it cool on the way to market.

Its fame took off in 2014, when it became the second and highest of three categorized climbs on Stage One of the Tour de France in Yorkshire; German rider Jens Voigt led it and became the first wearer of that edition's polka-dot jersey.

It's also a regular on British television, appearing in "Clarkson's Car Years" and several episodes of Top Gear, which used it as a driving test track. For any motorcycle traveler, it remains the essential postcard of the Dales.

Riding the Evo Triangle by motorcycle means tracing the most-cited curve circuit in British motorcycling: the A5, A4086 and A498 close into a roughly 30-km triangle around Pen-y-Gwryd, at the foot of Mount Snowdon, Wales's highest peak.

The route's backbone is the A5, built by Scottish engineer Thomas Telford in the early 19th century as a mail-coach road between London and Holyhead -one of the most ambitious road-engineering projects of its era, still in use 200 years later.

The name "Evo Triangle" comes from the British magazine evo, which turned it into its regular test track for sports cars; today it's just as popular with motorcycles, drawn to its constant-radius curves between the Llanberis and Nant Ffrancon passes.

Climbing the Horseshoe Pass by motorcycle means tracing the curve that gives it its name: the A542 draws a full horseshoe around the valley between Llantysilio Mountain and Cyrn-y-Brain, near Llangollen in north Wales.

The road dates to 1811, when it was built as a turnpike; today it's still, by the area's own account, "extremely popular with cyclists and motorcyclists" who climb it to repeat its tight-radius curves.

For decades, the summit -at 417 meters- was home to the Ponderosa café, a mandatory stop for any biker crossing north Wales, until it closed in 2025. The pass itself, though, is as busy as ever -still the favorite detour for anyone leaving Llangollen in search of fast curves before heading on to Snowdonia.

Crossing The Lecht by motorcycle on the A939 means stringing together four summits in a row through the heart of the Cairngorms: Dava Moor (321 m), the Bridge of Brown pass (438 m), the Lecht Ski Centre (637 m, the route's high point) and Gairnshiel (550 m), between Nairn and Ballater.

The Cock Bridge to Tomintoul stretch has a very specific reputation among Scots themselves: it's, almost every year, the first road in all of Great Britain to close for snow when autumn arrives, well before any other Highland pass.

Outside the snow season, it's one of Scottish riders' favorite routes for fast moorland curves without the NC500's tourist traffic -a local classic that almost no international motorcycle traveler knows about yet.