This is my road – at least it feels that way. For as long as I have scratched a living writing about cars, I have come to this windy mountaintop in this peaceful corner of Wales to drive and photograph them. You know a place well after 16 years, and where this road sweeps one way and jinks the other comes as no surprise to me now. Nor could its rolling crests, sharp compressions or falling cambers catch me unaware.
Scatter enough of my belongings about the place and it might feel like home. So I have my road, this wandering byway that scrambles up one side of comely Llangynidr Mountain, across the scrubby plateau at its peak with views towards the taller prominences in the west, before tumbling back down to the lowlands of the Usk Valley far below. And I have this car, warming now, reassuring me at every turn that it has balance, that there is stability, that I don’t need to be wary of it.
Later on, in this final week of summer, the heat will become almost too much to bear. But not yet, not at this early hour with heavy iron-grey clouds overhead, the last of the night’s rainfall still to be lifted from the ground. At any other time, in most other cars I would drive this road like we once flew through our childhood homes, two stairs at a time, sliding along polished wooden floors in thick socks, hooking a forearm into the bannister to swing our bodies smartly around it. But in this car, still so unfamiliar to me, it seems prudent to walk before I try to run.
