If asked my favourite area of scenery I'd be hard-pressed to reply - I have so many, all very different! Nor do I ever fall into the trap of trying to say which is "best". One may be more spectacular, gentle or peaceful than another, but they are not in competition.
For example, sticking only to my own country, in returning recently from visiting the Yorkshire Dales (NW England), I avoided the congested motorways in the Midlands by driving most of the way to my home on the South Coast via the English counties bordering Wales: Cheshire. Staffordshire I think, then Shropshire, Herefordshire, Gloucestershire. (Historically some of this land was Welsh, but many centuries ago, well before the countries became the UK.) Then back onto motorway, over the Severn Bridge into Avon and Somerset, where it uses a sharp gap in the Mendip Hills and passes the Polden Hills, both between Bristol and Taunton.
Yes, nominally slower than using the M-ways in good conditions but much more pleasant driving, and the motorways are presently scenes of congestion and queues thanks to interminable road-works signed as "Upgrading to Smart Motorway". I don't how an inanimate object can be "smart" in the colloquial way the Dept of Transport means, but there we are!
That's from one magnificent hill country via others to the rolling Chalk hills of Dorset, all very different in nature thanks to a few hundred million years of very varied and active geology; and the Dorset coast, a geological World Heritage Site, on the English Channel. All in a driving distance of about 350 miles, so in a straight line, less than 300.
Of the hills, the Pennines are the greatest in extent, peak altitudes and at times and on their high moors, bleakness. The Poldens are the smallest, but because they stand proud as a narrow ridge between two areas of the Somerset Levels almost at sea-level, give surprisingly impressive views from the road along their narrow crest. Their summit is now National Trust land: farmed but with footpaths justly popular with walkers.
Autumn has arrived now, rather late, with the trees only just in full reds and yellows. With the Sun lower in the sky at this latitude and time of year, its light in clearer air picked out all manner of topographical details in the hills. Sunlight through thin mist gave a dreamy quality to a large estate park (of grassland grazed by sheep and sprinkled liberally with mature trees) the road passes through just South of the lovely valley occupied by Church Stretton, between two superb ridges.
And that's all in just one strip of country you could fit into a rectangle about 300 miles long by 50 wide.
