6-minute read

Twisty roads near me: how to find the best driving roads

Most good driving roads aren’t famous. They’re a back road over a hill an hour from home. Here is what makes a road worth the drive, and how to find the twisty ones near you.

What makes a good driving road?

Ask ten drivers and you get ten roads, but the good ones share a few things:

• Corners, and plenty of them. Not one hairpin and ten kilometres of straight, but bend after bend of different kinds: quick kinks, slow corners, ones that tighten. Rhythm matters more than any single corner.
• Hills. Climbs, crests and dips make a road come alive. Mountain passes stack hairpins on top of each other.
• Little traffic and few villages. Every 50 km/h zone, junction and set of lights breaks the flow. The best roads go between places, not through them.
• A decent surface you can see along. Good tarmac and some sightlines into the corners. A narrow lane with hedges on both sides can be twisty and still no fun.
• Something to look at. Lakes, forest, a valley below. You’ll stop for photos.

How do I find curvy roads on a map?

Open any map and zoom out until the main roads look straight. Then look for the thin lines that wriggle between them.

• Follow the terrain. Roads along rivers, through valleys and over ridges bend because the land makes them. Switch on terrain or contour lines: where the contours bunch up, the road has to climb.
• Look for passes and saddles. A road that crosses high ground between two valleys is often the best road in the area.
• Check before you go. Satellite and street-level photos show whether a road is two lanes or one, tarmac or gravel, open or lined with houses.
• Skip the fake twisties. Squiggles through a town are junctions, not corners.

Ask the people who already know

Local car clubs, motorcycle groups and owners’ forums have usually ridden every good road within a hundred kilometres. Bikers in particular know which roads are worth it and when they’re quiet. A weekend meet or a post asking for a route will turn up roads no map would show you.

How to find twisty roads near you with Turini

Turini scores roads by how much they bend, so the twisty ones find you instead of the other way round:

• Twisty roads on the map. Switch on the layer and every road is coloured by how much it bends and climbs. Tap one to add it to your route or drive there.
• Loops from where you are. The loop button lists the best twisty loops that bring you back to the start. Plan this loop turns one into a route you can edit.
• The twisty way from A to B. With Twistiest on, a route takes the better road within the extra time you allow, from 15 minutes to an hour.
• A heads-up in Free Roam. Drive without a route and Turini tells you when a twisty road turns off ahead.

You can tune what counts as good: love hills or ignore them, a bonus for lakes and forest, avoid 50 km/h zones, skip roads with no surface on the map, fewer road changes. The suggestions come from a road index Turini builds region by region, so coverage can differ by area. The pace notes themselves work on any road in OpenStreetMap.

Once you have a road, Turini writes the pace notes for it and calls every corner on the drive, about 4.5 seconds before you reach it. New to the calls? Start with how to read pace notes, or read what a rally co-driver does.

Famous driving roads to put on your list

Some roads are worth planning a trip around:

• Stelvio Pass, Italy. Dozens of numbered hairpins stacked up the climb from Prato.
• Transfăgărășan, Romania. A high road across the Carpathians, open in summer only.
• Col de Turini, France. A classic Monte Carlo Rally stage in the hills above Nice.
• Tail of the Dragon, USA. US 129 at Deals Gap, famous for 318 curves in 11 miles.
• Evo Triangle, Wales. Open moorland roads near Cerrigydrudion.
• Glencoe, Scotland. The A82 through the glen, more sweeping than tight, with the views to match.

See every road in the driving roads guide.

Drive them well

Go early in the morning or out of season, when the road is yours. Check the weather before you set off; Turini’s route preview shows it along the way. Slow down through villages: the people who live on a good road put up with a lot of us. On summer weekends, expect motorbikes in every corner. Drive a new road once at an easy pace before you push on.

Always drive within the law, the conditions and what you can see. Turini tells you what the map says; the road is what counts.

Driving with a car screen? See pace notes on Android Auto.