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Benzina recommended drives
ride 1 | ride 2 | ride 3 | ride 4
Ride 3
- Longleat, the Haynes Motor Museum, Cerne Abbas Giant, Salisbury, and Stonehenge – about 150 miles, or more if you visit the Sammy Miller museum.
Benzina is based in a quiet lane about 10 miles north of Stonehenge on the edge of Salisbury Plain. This means we get woken by gunfire and the tiles on our roof fall off when the Army try out their really big guns, but this is a Good Thing because Salisbury Plain is the biggest area of open grassland in Europe, with sweeping open views and hardly anywhere for tractors and policemen to hide. Perfect, in other words, for your sports car or motorcycle.
Leave our lane at the southern (Easterton) end, turning right onto the B3098 through Market Lavington and then turning left at the West Lavington crossroads onto the A360 towards Salisbury. Just before Shrewton snick right onto the B390, a roller coaster of bind crests and oops-there’s-a–tank-in-the-road eye openers. Tank drivers peer at the world through a letter box so you’ve got to look out for them. The B390 ends at a T junction where you turn right onto the A36.
Pass Heytesbury, where there’s a posh gastro pub that used to be run by Antony Worrell-Thompson if you need expensive chips in your life, or scoff up the A36 Warminster bypass instead. I’ve seen so many speed traps along here I just cruise along and admire the ancient scarps and old fort at Cley Hill. Leave the bypass at the third roundabout turning left towards Frome and Longleat: you might want to drop by the Safari Park, but visiting by ‘bike or open top sports car is surely too much for even the biggest adrenalin junkie.
Follow the A362 until turning left at the T junction onto the A361. This bypasses Frome, a cutesy old mill town loved by the shabby-chic crowd and once rated as the place you were most likely to see Madonna at a cashpoint. Look out instead for a left a few miles after Nunney Hatch services onto the A359. Working farms and tumbledown barns make this admittedly narrow road feel more real than the polished Wyle Valley over to the east. And what more could you ask for next than the Haynes Motor Museumif only for coffee?
Join the A303 eastbound (towards Andover and London) taking the first exit at Wincanton; pass under the A303 to pick up the A357 southbound to Dorchester. Turn right at crossroads onto the A30 towards Sherborne and its magnificent castle and lakes and Sherborne Old Castle. Then take the A352 towards Dorchester and pass the infamous Cerne Abbas Giant From here you can brave the run cross country to the fabulously named Piddlehinton, then the B3143/B3142 (watch for the fork in the road!) to Puddletown. Or stay on the A352, picking up the A35 to bypass Dorchester. Either way watch for the turning and bear left onto the A354 to Blandford Forum and on to Salisbury. The spire of one of the world’s most perfect cathedrals draws you in but I tend to use the A3094 to Wilton (yes, where they made the carpets) as a sort of western Salisbury inner bypass, keeping left at the traffic lights. As you approach Wilton traffic lights force you left, and at the next roundabout turn right before picking up the northbound A360 to get home. You really should stop off at Stonehenge which is a small and well signposted diversion for that all important “what I did on my day off” photograph.
But for those who have an even greater taste for the road, don't just turn back to Salisbury when you get to Dorchester - stick with the A35 right past Bournemoth and on towards Lyndhurst, and visit the UK's finest motorcycle museum at New Milton, run by the legendary Sammy Miller