You set off on a spring morning, windows down, full of hope. Sunglasses, flasks of tea and a picnic rug are packed. You are ready to experience the freedom of the road, leave your worries in the rear-view mirror, put pedal to the metal (and every other optimistic road trip cliché).

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Follow the brown signs to the Pembrokeshire Coast 200, South West 660, Wales Way, Antrim Coast Road or any of the other curated, promoted and hash-tagged routes now crisscrossing the UK. Whether it’s following the signs for the North Coast 500’s Highland circuit, starting in Inverness, or the Atlantic Highway through North Cornwall, thousands of us will head off this year in search of a mythical experience – the one we saw in the drone video of a couple in an open-top car winding between hedgerows.

You plan to potter across pretty Cambridgeshire, for example, marvelling at a panorama of floral verges, flint cottages and pretty churches. But it won’t be long until you arrive at Reality City, UK. That place where a crater suddenly swallows your front offside wheel. You might even plunge into the recent Cambridgeshire pothole filled with naan bread by an enterprising restaurateur — a culinary protest against council neglect (with a good bit of PR thrown in). Or if........

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