There is a corner called Guthrie's Memorial high on the Mountain Mile, named after the rider Jimmie Guthrie, who died at the German Grand Prix in 1937. There is a bend called Hailwood's Height. A junction called Brandish Corner. A spot called the 26th Milestone. The names along the A18 Snaefell Mountain Road read like a roll call - some marking corners, some marking riders. This is the upper third of the oldest motorcycle racing circuit still in use anywhere in the world, the Isle of Man TT Mountain Course, and it is at once one of the most beautiful drives on Earth and one of the most unforgiving.
The Mountain Road was not built so much as drawn together. In the mid-19th century a string of pre-existing tracks, cart-roads and bridle paths between Douglas and Ramsey were upgraded into a single A-road. Sheep gates were fitted - the East Mountain Gate, Keppel Gate, the Beinn-y-Phott gate at Brandywell - because the higher ground was, and still is, common grazing. Much of the route north of Keppel Gate, all the way to the Gooseneck corner near Ramsey, was built on land that transferred to the Crown after the Duke of Atholl sold off the island's feudal rights and the Disafforesting Commission of 1860 reorganised the upland. The road that resulted is purpose-built in the 19th-century way: small cuttings, embankments and revetments, following the contour where it can, taking right-angled bends where it must. Tiny metal milestones still mark the route at one-mile intervals from the period when James Garrow was Isle of Man Surveyor-General. They are numbered from Douglas to Ramsey.
The TT Course was first raced in 1911. The Manx Grand Prix joined in 1923. Both events run on public roads that are closed for racing by an Act of Tynwald, the Manx parliament - one of the very few examples in the world of a national legislature shutting down a national highway so people can ride motorcycles round it at appalling speed. On race days the Mountain Road is one-way from Ramsey toward Douglas. From the south, the route climbs through Hillberry, Brandish, Creg-ny-Baa, Kate's Cottage and Keppel Gate, on past the Windy Corner and Brandywell, before reaching the highest point of the whole course at 422 metres - the spot height between the Bungalow and Hailwood's Height. Gradients reach 14 percent. From there the road drops past Verandah, the Stonebreakers Hut, the East Mountain Gate, the Mountain Box, the Mountain Mile, Guthrie's Memorial, the 26th Milestone, the Gooseneck, Water Works Corner and the Ramsey Hairpin before falling into Ramsey itself. National Geographic ranked it the world's number-eight Driver's Drive in 2014.
It would be dishonest not to say what this road has cost. Riders have died on the TT Mountain Course in greater numbers than at any other purpose-built or makeshift motor racing circuit in modern history. Some of the names on the corners are tribute corners: Guthrie's Memorial commemorates Jimmie Guthrie, who died racing in Germany in 1937 but whose connection to the Isle of Man was deep. Hailwood's Height is named for Mike Hailwood, who actually died in a road accident in 1981 but whose TT achievements made the location his. Other names along the course commemorate other deaths in other places. Riders come here knowing the statistics, and most of them say something similar when asked why: that the course is a test, that it tests you against yourself rather than another rider, that the line on the Mountain Mile is the most honest thing they have ever felt under a tyre. Their families bear the cost when something goes wrong. The community on the island bears the grief alongside them. Spectators travel the world to be here. None of that makes the deaths less real, but it is how riders and the Isle of Man have lived with each other for more than a century: with full awareness of what is at stake.
Most days of the year, of course, the Mountain Road is just a road. Lorries and farm Land Rovers grind up it; commuters take it from one side of the island to the other; tourists take their hire cars from Douglas to Ramsey or back. Cyclists are allowed except during TT fortnight in June, when the section is one-way southbound for spectator traffic, and during actual race sessions when the road is closed entirely. From the top, on a clear day, the view is extraordinary. To the south the island falls toward Douglas. To the north the broad arc of Ramsey Bay opens out, with the Cumbrian fells of England across the water and the bottom of Scotland visible beyond. The Snaefell Mountain Railway crosses the road at the Bungalow, taking passengers in its little electric tram to the 2,036-foot summit of the mountain itself. The race signs say things like Caution - Bend, and the white-painted kerbing has been touched up countless times. The road remembers everything that happens on it. That is a heavy thing to carry, and it is also why people keep coming.
The A18 Snaefell Mountain Road runs 13.35 miles between Douglas (54.15N, 4.48W) and Ramsey (54.32N, 4.38W) over the spine of the Isle of Man. Highest point on the road is approximately 422 m / 1,385 ft, between the Bungalow and Hailwood's Height. From altitude the route is visible as a sinuous line climbing the western flank of Snaefell (2,036 ft / 621 m) - the island's highest point - and crossing the saddle north of the summit before descending past the Gooseneck and the Ramsey Hairpin into Ramsey town. Nearest airport is Ronaldsway (EGNS), 12 nm SW of the Bungalow. The Snaefell Mountain Railway crosses the road at the Bungalow. Local weather can change rapidly with low cloud forming on the summit.