While living in the UK, I bought a Heritage pass and took off almost every weekend either by light rail or by car. When my wife came to visit though, we drove from my flat near Crawley to Scotland over a 3 day trip. We visited in order: Ashford, Broomfield (Leeds Castle), Rettondon, Chelmsford, Ipswitch, Cambridge, Nottingham, Leeds, Newcastle upon Tyne, Edinburgh, Perth and finally ending in Dundee where I have distant relatives.
In all my trips, driving through the hills of Yorkshire and Cumbria are the scariest, but getting to Scone Palace outside of Perth through snow was quite challenging.
Being from SoCal and having lived in the UK, let me explain:
In the UK many of the roads are quite literally conversions from horse drawn carriage paths. In some cases, a drunk wanker from Liverpool could draw a better line for a road than most roads connecting off many of the UK motorways (Especially in Wales or Scotland). Add in round abouts, hills, creeks, rivers and stupidly narrow bridges, it’s difficult.
I’d sincerely rather drive the Grapevine through Mammoth into Yosemite Village with black ice warnings than try and drive myself from Maidenbower, West Sussex UK to Dundee, Scotland again tbh.