Drive to the end of Gas Works Road, dodge around the back of
the Birds Eye processing plant and park by the concrete sea defences.
Get out of the car, nod at the two council workers up to not much at all in
their Transit and glance up and down one of the sorriest seafront stretches in
the whole of the UK. You don’t come to an industrial port for the views. You
come here for the plinth, the one that states this place at the arse end of a Lowestoft
industrial estate is Britain’s most easterly point. It’s somehow fitting that
the flat, concrete disc was placed there by an oil company.
For us, this is the start of a quest to drive across the
breadth of the UK solely on B-roads, from here (52.48N, 01.76E) to Aberystwyth way over on the far side of Wales and handily
just 0.07 of a degree more northerly in latitude. Between these two coastal
points lie the Broads, the Fens, the Midlands, the borders and the hills and
valleys of Wales – a geographical cross section through Great Britain, replete
with a fat catalogue of B-roads of every size, shape, width, surface, angle,
camber and lumpiness.
The A45 is a
sharply styled hatchback
B-roads are where we crown our heroes. They’re levellers, roads that punish excessive width and
insufficient ground clearance, where too much power is sometimes a bad thing.
They reward response and agility, visibility and traction. They are hot-hatch
and rally-replica roads, and today they will echo to the sounds of not one of
those types, but, well, both. Meet the brand-new VW Golf R. It has a vertical
tailgate signalling its membership of the shopping
class. It also has the 2.0-litre turbocharged engine de rigueur for any hot
hatch worth its pedigree. And it comes with that rallying essential, four-wheel
drive. Lined up next to it is its most direct rival, the Mercedes-Benz A45 AMG.
Ditto on all counts.
The Golf R offers
a firm but superbly controlled ride
They’re not created completely equal, of course. The Golf
develops 296bhp and 280lb ft all the way from 1,800
to 5,500rpm; the A45 boasts a thunderous 355bhp and 332lb ft
available anywhere between 2,250 and 5,000rpm. The Golf is 60kg lighter. Both
have double-clutch gearboxes, the Merc’s seven speeds
outstripping the VW’s to the tune of one. Both have rear axles that are
decoupled under light loads to improve efficiency, but while the AMG can only
send a maximum of 50 per cent of torque rearwards, the R’s fifth-generation Haldex system can send everything to the back. Quite what
sort of a mess you’d have to get yourself into for that to be the case I’m not
sure, but it sounds good.
The black dials
with carbon-fibre-effect inserts are one of the A45's
distinguishing features
It’s certainly not a situation we happen across on the B1074
or B1136 (and to answer an inevitable question, yes, we did touch the
occasional A-road. The only other way across the River Waveney
on the Norfolk Broads would have been a boat). Norfolk, once outside of Lowestoft, turns out to be a genteel, pastoral place, a
Constable painting come to life. The village of Seething seems ill-named, and
the A45 strikes an incongruous sight. Blame the newly fitted rear wing. This
does offset the visual weight of the nose, but – matched with black paint and
wheels – appears capable of striking fear into the local populace, most of whom
are of a Honda Jazz persuasion. The Golf is more acceptable – the body shape is
more familiar, less contentious, the paintwork is Tory blue and the wheels
shiny as a new pin. You could drive it while wearing a tie,
and it wouldn’t be out of keeping. A tie-wearer driving the Merc
would almost certainly have it wrapped around their head.
