Berkshire on the Great West Way

Sarah Rodi caught up with Director David Andrews on the anniversary of the Great West Way

You’ve probably all heard of Route 66 in the US, The Legendary Pacific Coast Touring Route or the Great Southern Touring Route in Australia, maybe even Germany’s Romantic Road, but did you know England has its very own touring route?

The Great West Way® is a multi-modal touring route from London to Bristol, encompassing 500 miles of navigable routes along the Thames, Kennet & Avon Canal, Great Western Railway, and numerous walking and cycling trails.

Director of the Great West Way, David Andrews, has spent his career in tourism destination marketing. He worked for Visit Britain for 15 years in London and Central America before moving to Visit Wiltshire in 2011.

“The Great West Way has been a fantastic opportunity,” he says. “The idea came out of a brainstorm about how we could market North Wiltshire better. It started out as a PR campaign for a driving trail, designed to bring more tourism to the region. Businesses were reporting that although tourists would visit, they wouldn’t stay long, so we did some research into what people were looking for, what would encourage them to come out of London and what would entice them to stay longer.

“We looked at the Wild Atlantic Way and how that had been marketed. We wanted to come up with a name that was evocative of escape and adventure, with authenticity and provenance behind it, but that gave us the flexibility to pull a lot of places into it. We decided to open up a corridor that could be explored by bike, road, bus, rail, canal or on foot,” says David.