A 400-mile EV road trip to Britain's best pubs

The issue’s cover is an opulent paid-for advertisement about the Standard 10 of 1934, and we’re beguiled inside by tales of a hack called Brian Twist lapping the banked Monza racetrack in a straight-eight Alfa Romeo.

Elsewhere in the same issue, however, The Autocar reports how the law is already placing curbs on both driving and car ownership. There are stern words in the editorial leader about how “pedestrians are to blame for the majority of accidents”, and we complain about “the parking fee menace”. Strange to think how many of our motoring irritations are at least 91 years old... 

We settled on three disparate hotels to visit from The Scribe’s list: The Shaven Crown in Shipton-under-Wychwood in the heart of the Cotswolds, The Paddocks Hotel at Symonds Yat, Herefordshire, and the handsome Osborne Hotel overlooking Meadfoot Beach in Torquay on the English Riviera. They were all still in business, and they all stood out from one another.

A few calls soon established that their respective proprietors were intrigued enough by tales of a 91-year-old review in The Autocar to want to meet us. It also helped that we could link the chosen destinations in one admittedly quite long day, with the option of a second day available if the whole thing got out of control.

Our plan boiled down to a 362-mile round trip, starting from my place near Cirencester, Gloucestershire, as calculated by the algorithmic wizards of Waze. When the whole thing could be plotted today on a digital map in minutes, I fell to wondering how my journalistic ancestor of 1933 would have calculated this same route, and how long it would have taken, given no motorways, no service areas, no Waze and the limited capabilities of the cars of 1933 and earlier.

Which, of course, raised the issue of which car to take. There was no guidance from The Scribe, beyond his implied liking for the better things of life and his evident comfort about driving long distances. The advertisement on the page straight after his column — for the Rolls-Royce Phantom II 40/50hp — might have provided a clue, but obtaining one of those was impractical at short notice.

Should we take a modern or a vintage car? The Scribe would certainly have driven a contemporary machine, so we decided on the same. That eliminated a smooth-cruising choice from Bentley’s classic collection (generously offered). Should I take one of my own cars — Alpine A110, Dacia Duster or Ford Ranger Raptor? None seemed right. Besides, modern surely means an electric car nowadays.

Taking into account The Scribe’s evident liking for the finer things, I decided eventually on a Mercedes-Benz EQS, the elegant all-electric S-Class that seemed entirely in-character with the project. It was a car I hadn’t driven before, and it would get the job done in silence and comfort.

Mercedes was instantly helpful: the car arrived at my place the day before our long day’s drive began. My partner for the project was to be John Bradshaw, our chief photographer and a man who I’d suggest knows this country every bit as well as The Scribe did back in the day.

The plan was first to head north to Shipton, a modest 26 miles away, or 45 minutes or so, then due west to The Paddocks, a matter of 59 miles and 90 minutes' driving time.

Allowing enough time for chat and photographs that today are considered as important as the words they accompany, this would let us take in an Exeter charging station in time for a late lunch and set us on The Osborne's elegant doorstep - a journey of 137 miles/150 minutes - before the none-too-abundant daylight needed for our photos had run out. Done like this, we could return in darkness with all the images we needed.

The road from Cirencester to Shipton-under-Wychwood, through Bibury and Burford, is my stamping ground, and we seem to be there in no time at all. I've driven a hundred times before past The Shaven Crown hotel, an imposing building opposite the village's picturesque green, but in future I will pay it more attention.

The hotel is an extraordinary building that dates back 740 years in places, with a cobbled hall that was once a food market as its entrance feature. At another stage it served as a hunting lodge for Queen Elizabeth I, and at yet another it provided shelter to the monks travelling to Birmingham and beyond.

Today it is best described as a restaurant with rooms. Manager Tom Bryan (whose family acquired the place about 18 months ago) met us with a smile and explained that memorable, traditional food as befits the building and its history will be the emphasis in future.

It struck me that The Scribe, who reckoned this "a smallish place where a party could have a very nice Christmas with the management's cooperation" would still approve. Back to Burford we drive, turning right along the A40 and following it, but for a bypass that skirts to the south of Cheltenham, until the road turns south through increasingly lush countryside.

Just short of Monmouth we turn left and into the Wye Valley National Landscape to Symonds Yat, famous for wonderful views over the River Wye and much bird and wildlife. It is an important regional feature.

The EQS is already doing what Mercedes do: shrinking around us and proceeding with magic carpet-like comfort and silence. Its WLTP range is a claimed 370 miles, which in theory means we would be able to complete the round trip without stopping to charge publicly.

But a steady-state motorway cruise, even at a stay-out-of-trouble 70mph, is far harder on battery range than slower, give-and-take driving. One shortish pause to charge near Exeter would make the whole trip easy and take the pressure off.

The road to The Paddocks turns out to be a steep descent, almost down to water level amid beautiful river bank gardens. The towering cliffs I remembered from previous trips to this place overlooked us like massive natural monuments.

Many of the hotel's motley collection of buildings seem newer than 91 years old, but you can see older edifices as their backbone. The "extra-special arrangements" The Scribe promised for Christmas were emphatically not in evidence.

In fact, the place seems deserted. Yet it is thriving. Proprietor Marina Wong, who took over The Paddocks four years ago, doesn't take casual visitors any more. That's no longer her main business. Instead, she caters for regular, and quite large, groups of coach-borne visitors who come to The Paddocks to dance and once inside you can see why.

On one end of the group of buildings is the elegant, old-school and so-called Regency Ballroom. Groups fill the 50 bedrooms, arriving from as far away as Scotland and Ireland, and spend much of their time in the ballroom, with a bit of walking thrown in. They're around as long as five days at a time and bring their own bands, and before they leave they rebook for next year.

Add a few hunt balls and school proms and you have a thriving business. It's another world. On his travels, The Scribe seems to have got wind of this ballroom activity, referring to "jolly but invigorating" holidays and that included  "dances and parties".

I found myself wondering how his 1933 car would have coped with some of the punishing climbs back to the top of the valley; the Merc rolled upwards effortlessly and without so much as a sound.

It's a bit of a faff to find your way from Symonds Yat back to motoring civilisation, down the A449 via Newport and the M4. But after you do, the 100-mile trip to Torquay is a simple matter of rolling down the M5 until you turn off at Topsham and follow the A380 through approximately one million roundabouts and into Torquay, blighted on our visit with more than its share of traffic-choking roadworks. 

Before leaving the M5 we pause at 3pm at Exeter services, undoubtedly a leading contender in any competition to find the world's most confusingly laid-out service area. However, soon it turns into nirvana for the EV driver, because there are literally dozens of rapid chargers, and today many are available.

They charge our Benz to 90% from 50% in the time it takes us each to eat a Cornish pasty and ruminate on what a complete meal a pasty can be - if it's a good one. We use up no more time than if we'd stopped for petrol, collecting power at 124kW.

The light is starting to fade by the time we make it to The Osborne, but Bradshaw doesn't care much when he sees the way its magnificent curved building is lit at first by the setting sun and then by floodlights, foyer lights and stray light from bedroom windows.

Photographers love a night picture, and here is a golden opportunity, especially when extremely helpful staff (who ply us with gratis coffee) find an extra set of lights to illuminate the facade. 

In latitude terms The Osborne sits on one of the most southerly parts of the UK coastline, and its rich and well-cultivated garden demonstrates the advantage of that. Its magnificent outline is like a white-painted, slightly reduced version of Bath's Royal Crescent, and I'll bet it's visible many miles away to the cruise ships that amble by.