For us keen drivers, the road is our playground. Well, this certainly used to be the case, but entirely too many of our former favourites have been ruined and all the fun squeezed out of them, whether it be from nanny state shutting down the party with speed cameras and arcane rulings, or simply because too many “other drivers” have the bare-faced cheek to use your favourite stretch of road at the same time as you. Let’s celebrate, while we still can, those little slithers of blacktop that we can still have fun on. If you’re up for a bit of crowd participation, I want to see whatever local road you hold dear, on which you know you can still find joy. I’ll show you mine after the jump. This is my go-to route for checking vehicle chassis, balance, grip, etc. You know; research. You can put your foot to the floor as soon as you leave the 30mph village limit and almost immediately plunge down hill ready for an extremely tight right hander with a slightly negative camber, followed by a slightly uphill straight into a left hander you need to take in third, keeping the turbo spooling if you can. Then it’s foot down into a gentle right hand bend leading to another third gear left hander. A quick right-left flick heralds the arrival of a seemingly endless uphill sweeper to the right, flanked by a steep grassy hill down which people go “Zorbing”. It’s a negative camber and slippery when wet, so get ready to react, then apply more power to the exit ready for the final uphill charge before reaching the next village speed limit, and the end of the fun. What I don’t want to do here is encourage a speedy demise of any “fun zones” that this article might identify, so I’ve anonymised the map as well as I can. Also, it should be mentioned, before I state the obvious that pedestrians, cyclists, horses and other road users must be given space and that spirited driving need not be dangerous. Huge fun can be had on this route without exceeding any speed limits, too. Is there a road that you rely on for your blacktop jollies? Please give us a peek into your own local route of dreams in the comments below. (Lead image from riderdiaries.wordpress.com)