Memorable road trips

Last weekend's CBC Radio program "Fresh Air" included a segment on memorable and scenically spectacular road trips. I fired off an email reinforcement, mentioning a few of my own trips. 
Here's what I said:

The discussion about road trips reminded me how fortunate I’ve been.  In rough chronological order the most memorable have been the drive from Canberra to the south coast highway, and on to Sydney along a lovely coast past Sublime Point and Bulli Lookout, to Botany Bay — the rest of the drive into Sydney though heavily built up industrial areas is not as pleasant.

From Loch Lomond back to Edinburgh in our VW camper van, over the pass called Rest and Be Thankful. The first time we did this we couldn’t see much because of thick misty rain, and the journey was memorable mainly  for aromatic dog farts and carsick toddlers. Fortunately my wife and I made that trip again many years later, without carsick kids and farting Labrador puppies, on a sparkling sunny day when we could admire the scenery, which is some of the loveliest in Britain.

Ottawa to Cape Cod through upstate NY, across Lake Champlain then along the Interstate through Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The drive through Vermont and New Hampshire must be one of those rare excursions on which a busy expressway passes through such beautiful scenery.

Finally, perhaps most spectacular, several other trips in our VW camper van from Edinburgh to Northern Italy via the Rhine Valley and the Swiss Alps. Fortunately 5 years in Edinburgh gave us — our kids really — a chance to visit  some of the castles on both the left and right banks of the Rhine.  Adults like my wife and I thought most of the castles were rather over-rated but our 3 preteen kids loved them.

----------------------------------------------------------

In the course of my long and interesting life I've enjoyed innumerable road trips in many parts of the world: UK, Europe, North America, Colombia, South America, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, India, Sri Lanka. I must dust off my fading memories and write a coherent account of them. I won't attempt to say which is the 'best' of them, still less try to rank them in order according to any criteria. I can timidly offer the opinion that rail travel is often better than road, at any rate in much of Western Europe, and in Japan.