Britain’s most scenic drives: The Atlantic Highway linking Somerset, Devon and Cornwall

On a quest to find the country's most glorious roads, Annunciata Elwes is wowed by The Atlantic Highway.

Seascape of Bedruthan steps Cornwall.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
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Few roads pass through the misty, mythical past in quite the same way as the Atlantic Highway, a salty stretch of the A39 that trims the craggy edges of Devon and Cornwall between Barnstaple and Fraddon.

Sunset at Bedruthan Steps. Carnewas and Bedruthan Steps is a stretch of coastline located on the north Cornish coast between Padstow and Newquay, in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom

With the vast, dazzling ocean ever in sight on what truly earns its spot among Britain's most scenic drives, it takes in cliffs, beaches, coves, lighthouses, barley fields, rolling pasture, picturesque towns and wind-bashed landmarks such as Tintagel Castle, stronghold of Cornish kings, tryst for Tristan and Yseult and site of King Arthur’s conception.

Spring flowers in Cornwall

Quite a few centuries younger, Bude Castle is also en route, as is the pretty fishing village of Port Isaac, where Doc Martin was filmed.

Tintagel Castle Ruins

Towards the end of the Atlantic Highway’s 70 miles, drivers can stretch their legs on the South West Coast Path as it wraps around the cliffs from just north of Newquay towards Park Head, and wonder at how the scene might have changed since the giant Bedruthan hopped across the bay using musseled-up granite stacks as stepping stones (now known as Bedruthan Steps).

Tintagel Bridge

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Annunciata Elwes
Annunciata Elwes

Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.

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