Park and Ride

Miranda Sawyer drives from Croydon to Swindon, via Stevenage, Harrogate and Cadbury World in Birmingham, on a nice day out around suburban Britain. This is the Britain of motorways and heritage centres, of campaigning housewives and executive housing estates, of boy racers and Essex girls, of Cheshire wives and Scottish golfers. Put on your co-ordinating smart/casual wear (no trainers please) and join her for an evening at a prestigious hotel nightclub, a day in Britain's most average town, a trip round Romford's bourgeois drug addicts, a date with The Lighthouse Family, a few hours with Staffordshire's jet-set. Plus: a hen night, a car cruise, a swingers' special evening, and a lovely Sunday drive to see the new B&Q on the bypass. Forget the Britain that is green and pleasant, urban and dangerous, historic and scenic: this is the rest of it, the vast swathes of inbetweeny land, the multiplexed, motorwayed, mind your manners Great British Experience. And it may well be where you live.