I’m a huge fan of the British motoring TV show Top Gear. I’m certainly not alone as there’s a huge worldwide fan-base of this fantastic show on Final Gear. One particular episode had a stellar piece on finding Europe’s Greatest Driving Road.
As I live in the Greater Toronto Area, we are blessed with free universal health-care, a multi-cultural cross-section of the world, class-leading theatre and the most uninspired, grid-arranged roads ever devised by city planners and engineers. The gentlemen from Top Gear had me pining for mountains and canyons and tracts of lonely windy roads to carve in my sports car of choice. Alas and Whoa-is-Me, I live in Ontario the Flat and there are no roads capable of raising your heart-rate and the corners of your mouth for sheer driving pleasure.
Or is there?
In my netz-stumbling I happened across the GTA Motorcycle website and their wonderful and large picture of Ontario’s best bike roads (Click here). This map peeked my curiosity … could we have decent driving roads in Ontario and potentially near Toronto? Surely it couldn’t be!
This is the occasional chronicle of my search.
A Good Bike Road is Not Necessarily a Good Driving Road
In my brief experience with a smattering of these roads I’ve found this statement to be true. Here’s what I think a good driving road should consist of:
- A twisty and turny road. Is that so much to ask for? I’ve noticed that many of these so-called great bike roads are merely a nice country drive. Very little thrills or chills and very few turns. Come’on, although it’s not a track day, we do want to feel some G’s!
- Relative isolation / Low traffic. We can’t have a residential street as a good driving road as there are too many risks to going fast. We’re out for good fun, not to run down children, pets or rear-end a car coming out of a driveway.
- Elevation changes. Although not a mandatory requirement, entertainment comes with blind corners over crests and unweighting of the car.
- Good scenery doesn’t hurt.
Southwood Rd., Gravenhurst Ontario
I had intended on giving an ongoing review of all the good driving roads in Ontario that I’ve tried. But I’ve only found one road worth revisiting, Southwood Rd., west of Gravenhurst Ontario. Forks of the Credit, Snake Rd., Ridge Rd., and all the roads I’ve tried in the GTA, Milton, Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville and Niagra are poor poor comparisons to Southwood.
Southwood Rd. is very nice. It’s approximately 22km long and, save the beginning and end, it is devoid of residences, businesses, building and traffic. It undulates over many small hills and has many blind corners, diving into covered forest and firing out into rocky clearings on either side. Although it’s a pretty drive, the scenery isn’t the main draw to this road. It’s a 60km road that even at the speed limit provides comfortable Gs in the corners and thrills.
The road is a 2 lane divided road with very narrow lanes. Over the yellow line is danger as any of the hills could have oncoming traffic. To the right isn’t much better with a sliver of gravel shoulder and large rocks and trees over that. There’s no parking lots, parks or tourist attractions along the way so bring everything you need with you. If you crash you’re pretty far from the nearest garage … so don’t crash.
Traffic is very little considering there’s no homes or tourist traps on along the way. Keep the speeds down and pay attention because a lapse in concentration can have serious consequences.
From what I’ve seen so far, Southwood Rd. should be a defacto standard for Ontario driving roads. Going forward I will be measuring all other “great” driving roads in Ontario against Southwood. Try it, you’ll love it. Or don’t because we don’t want too much traffic
More to follow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbktFg-q3MU
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