World Record Breaking Roads

It doesn鈥檛 matter if you drive a 拢250,000 Lamborghini or a 拢25 Austin Allegro, as a motorist you rely heavily on roads. The majority of which simply get drivers from A to B with very little fuss, however, there are a select few roads which stand out as something more. Something special which can make motorists travel vast distances to experience and feel what these exceptional pieces of engineering have to offer. Highway 1 in Australia is the longest continuous road in the world. It circumnavigates the entire Australian mainland and lasts for roughly one service interval (9,000 miles). The mammoth circuit connects major cities such as Melbourne, Sydney, and Perth, along with a huge number of smaller towns. More remote sections contain mile upon mile of empty tarmac for you to enjoy. Highway 10, aka the straightest road in the world, is found in Saudi Arabia and was not born out of a desperate need to connect two cities, or even to open up a route for goods to be transported.

Clearly a man who did not do things in half measures, King Fahd鈥檚 Highway 10 runs for 149 miles and is claimed to take 2-hours to drive. Lombard Street, found in San Francisco, was supposedly made to allow automobiles access to the buildings surrounding the street in the 1920s - the previous road there being too steep for cars of the time. Covering a mere 400 metre slope, drivers are faced with a 27% gradient and a sum total of 1,440 degrees to turn through. If, like us, you are thinking it would make an excellent hill climb, it is sadly subject to a 5mph speed limit. While there is no Guinness World Record holder for the highest road in the world, the Bolivian roads surrounding Uturunku (a dormant volcano) stake a convincing claim. Coming in at nearly 5,790m (19,000ft) above sea level, there is a distinct lack of tarmac and more importantly, oxygen, but while few drivers will ever go to such motoring heights, the views on offer are truly sensational.

Meandering along the western Israeli shores of the Dead Sea is Route 90. The road plunges to 393m (1290ft) below sea level and is the lowest in the world. If you are planning a coastal road trip for the the scuba diving, this is maybe one to miss, mostly because the Dead Sea has such a high salt concentration that both fish and aquatic plants simply cannot survive. The chillingly named 鈥楻oad of Bones鈥?is more formally known as the M56 and runs through the far east of Russia. Its name comes from the Gulag prisoners who died (and were consequently buried under the road surface) in making the 1,258-mile road. What鈥檚 more, even if your heater manages to keep going in temperatures which have been recorded as low as -67.7 degrees celsius, there is a real and serious risk of being mauled by a bear. We advise against picnics on the M56.

Potholes, faded markings, and overgrown hedges are all signs of an old, dilapidated road which may have at some point been a glorious stretch of tarmac. There are old roads and then there are old roads, however, parts of the Via Appia, which is located in south east Italy, can be dated back as far as 312 B.C and are still in use today. The road was originally made by the then Roman Censor, Appius Claudius Caecus, who laid it as a military road. Today, the remaining parts are visited by tourists from all over the world, but the best preserved areas are those sections close to Rome which are for use by pedestrians only. What is most impressive is that on Baldwin Street there are 34 houses, which presumably house some incredibly athletic residents. The Laerdal Tunnel in Norway sits on the the main road between Bergen and Oslo.