Driving routes
Driving routes
BY CAR: Take the A82 north all the way to Fort William. From there, follow signs to the Ben Nevis Footpath, along a singletrack road. The path is opposite the Glen Nevis Youth Hostel. There is sufficient parking on the sides of the road as well as in the car park. You don't have to start out at Ben Nevis, but as most people do it this way, we thought we would as well.
This map shows you the distance and travelling time driving from Ben Nevis down to Snowdon without stopping, i.e. we only had a total of 13-14 hours to climb up and down the three mountains once we had got to them.
A useful computer programme is available from Microsoft called AutoRoute Express © 1988-1995. This clever programme allowed us to plot both the shortest or the quickest route from our home town of Stevenage to Fort William, and then from the Ben Nevis footpath via Wasdale Head in the Lake District to Pen-Y-Pass in Snowdonia. It also allows you to work out points of interest to visit on the way, as well as calculating how many miles we would do, how long it should take and how much the petrol was likely to cost!!
Our Fiat Punto covered about 500 miles in the end from Ben Nevis to Mount Snowdon, taking 10.5 hours with the petrol costing about £40. The Autoroute Express UK programme came up with near identical figures. REMEMBER, depending on what time you do the challenge you must bear in mind that on busy summer Bank holiday weekends the predicted time for a certain distance can change by up to a few hours. We were lucky with traffic and were able to travel down from Scotland without incident. It doesn't bear thinking about if we had been stuck in traffic on the motorway with the minutes slowly ticking away.
It is worth noting that the only real decision which you will have to make is whether you want to start climbing Scafell Pike from Seathwaite (which involves a longer, flatter walk, but is easier to get to, to and from the motorway), or to take the longer drive over Wrynose and Hardknott passes, (which is a lot harder to get to, but involves a much shorter walk and gives better navigation, especially in low visibility conditions). Either way if you have planned the routes properly it won't matter on which part of the mountain you start from.
It is always best to just simply consult your own atlas before the trip, and write down the exact route you wish to take, familiarising yourself with the route beforehand. Always check with Teletext or a daily newspaper a day or two before you leave home, in case there are any planned roadwork's or if traffic jams are likely.
This page once contained a breakdown of out entire driving route from Scotland down to Wales. However, as this was based on 1996 roads it was decided it couldn't be relied upon anymore.
Our total driving distance was 495 miles and took about 10.5 hours. Petrol cost approximately £41.
