A new tourist route for South West England: Get your kicks on the A30

The man who pays his way

St Michael's Mount (Simon Calder)

Writing about travel is, thankfully, a lot less challenging than the sharp end of the industry: helping to get planes away, cleaning out rental cars or creating exciting new places to stay. Having worked at least in the first two of those, I count my blessings that I can instead calibrate how well other people are doing. Sometimes, though, the practitioners of travel pose more profound questions – such as this week, when the organisers of the South West Tourism Conference asked me to address the question of International Tourists: What Do They Want?

I gave the matter my fullest attention for a good five minutes. International tourists, I concluded, want the same as domestic tourists: a series of enriching experiences against a compelling backdrop of coast, countryside or city.

Content with the answer, I had a cup of tea. Annoyingly, the body promoting tourism everywhere from the Cotswolds to Cornwall then asked for how to lure foreign visitors to the region. So I had to start thinking more deeply.

For the average Brit, South West England is a brand we understand. It comprises a tapering peninsula with an abundance of attractions from prehistoric wonders via cheerful resorts, brooding moors and hidden coves to the Eden Project – the greatest 21st-century landmark in Britain (as judged in our project with High Life magazine last year). As a final punctuation, it also includes the plucky Isles of Scilly.

But put yourself in the position of an international visitor. London is the big draw. The capital accounts for about half of all inbound visits, even though it's only a tiny fragment of the UK, with no beaches, fishing ports or countryside. Some tourists will recognise Bath, York and Edinburgh. Yet just as you might struggle to summarise the appeal of, say, Denmark beyond Copenhagen and Legoland, so foreign visitors need some help to comprehend the attractions of areas beyond the capital and the tourism “honeypots”.

What works is a road with a ring. The Irish and the Scots have realised this, with the Wild Atlantic Way and the North Coast 500 – both recent creations. They are simply existing roads and lanes knitted expertly together, marketing constructs aimed at luring people to the west coast of Ireland and north-west Scotland respectively. And very effective they are, too.

The Mother Road of highway tourism, Route 66, is the best example of getting people to aim south-west. Never mind that for most of the 2,000 miles between Chicago and Santa Monica, California, the road has been erased by the network of Interstate highways. People still love the concept. South-west England can go one stage better. The great journey is already in full working order. Mesdames et Messieurs, Damen und Herren, get your kicks on the A30.

I have also come up with a name for the “new” 280-mile trail to the end of England: Love Thirty.

Advantage Cornwall

California State Route 1 gets going at Malibu and hugs the Pacific Coast en route to Santa Barbara and Monterey, while the A30 begins inauspiciously, outside McDonald's on the west side of Hounslow and proceeds by way of Staines. For our purposes, Love Thirty will begin at Europe's biggest airport, Heathrow. The visitor needs only to turn away from London to find the highway to the sun (although I can't use that fine line, since Tom Fort chose it for his book about the A30's sibling, the A303).

Initially, the visitor might wonder if we're having a laugh at their expense, as they survey Bagshot and contend with the land of 1,000 roundabouts that is Basingstoke. Those locations might not fire anyone’s ignition, but soon Salisbury appears, and beyond it a brief flirtation with Dorset in the stately shapes of Shaftesbury and Sherborne.

Exeter is at roughly the halfway point, and after this fine Roman city the A30 clambers across Dartmoor and crosses the Tamar. Advantage Cornwall: Love Thirty provides the spine for both coasts. Tintagel Castle, St Ives and the Eden Project are accessible during the A30's westward progress to Penzance. And if that McDonald's breakfast has finally faded from memory, near Newquay, Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Cornwall will fortify travellers on Love Thirty.

St Michael’s Mount rises from to the south to indicate the end is nigh. The A30 leads you around Penzance, and 15 minutes later you reach Land’s End – a dramatic conclusion to a romantic road.

Playing it safe

The highway even has its own poem, John Betjeman's “Meditation On The A30”. It is, though, rather dark. The poem begins:

“A man on his own in a car/Is revenging himself on his wife; He opens the throttle and bubbles with dottle/And puffs at his pitiful life”.

It ends with a fatal car crash.

Other, safer forms of transport are available – notably the train, courtesy of Isambard Brunel.

I headed back on the Royal Duchy, as the 1.03pm from Penzance to Paddington is known. Before it left Cornwall, the train detached itself from the schedule. Once across the Tamar and into Devon, it came further adrift. But for amazing coast-hugging views, I commend the train I shall henceforth call the Dawlish Dawdler.