The Acle Straight starts at Acle Roundabout and ends at Vauxhall Roundabout in Great Yarmouth. It is 7.27 miles long and has one bend at Stacey Arms.
Driving down a straight, single carriageway road at a constant speed every day gives the mind time to wander and ask the kind of questions that probably never need be answered.
The question I had recently was: what if the Acle Straight was not 7.27 miles long and was, in fact, 10,765 miles long stretching from one corner of the Earth to another in a perfectly straight line.
As it turns out, the Acle Straight has a bearing of 094.37 degrees from Stacey Arms to Vauxhall Roundabout so, using some GIS software, it is possible to extend that line out and see what lays in its path. I used the ‘Gt Yarmouth 5’ sign as my datum point.
Head east and you’ll cross the Netherlands and Germany, Poland, into Belarus, Ukraine and Russia and then across the vast Eurasian Steppe through Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China and, eventually, to the Russian island of Расшуа in the Kuril Islands.
Head west toward Norwich and the Midlands, across Wales and the Irish Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, 2,000 miles on you hit the coast of Labrador before crossing the lakes and glaciers of Canada’s north to find yourself at Cape Kayakliut, Alaska, it’s then just a short hop across the peninsula to the Bering Sea.
If you’d like to plan an extended Acle Straight road trip I provide this Google Map of the places you’ll encounter for your pleasure.
You may be curious to know the time such a trip would take. Assuming a 50mph speed limit (with average speed cameras along its length), a trip from Great Yarmouth to the Bering Sea would take 95 hours (4 days) and the journey to the North Pacific Ocean would be 106 hours (4.5 days).
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