Larry and Barbara Griswold photograph by Tim Robison
Editor’s Note (October 2024): We love and celebrate our mountain communities; however, following the devastation of Hurricane Helene, many areas remain inaccessible for travel. Please check DriveNC.gov’s travel map for the latest on traveling to these areas.
There may be no road better suited for top-down exploration than the Blue Ridge Parkway. As a result, visitors often glimpse a host of unusual “wildlife” on the two-lane blacktop: Jaguars, Mustangs, Spyders, Sting Rays, “Hogs,” and the very rare Bugeye Sprite.
Larry and Barbara Griswold live a short distance from the parkway, near Asheville. “We can’t go anywhere without driving under a parkway bridge,” Barbara says. “It’s something that’s part of our everyday life.”
They especially enjoy taking out their 1967 Austin-Healey 3000 MK III for scenic jaunts. “It’s a wonderful driving road,” Larry says of the parkway, which was designed for just the sort of casual spins that the couple takes on a regular basis. “It’s very scenic, and you get to just drive and drive.”
David Wood is another vintage sports car enthusiast, who — being from Derbyshire, England — comes by his love for British motorcars naturally. After immigrating to the U.S. in the ’90s, Wood eventually landed in Hendersonville in 2017. Today, he’s the president of the British Car Club of WNC, one of the dozens of car and motorcycle enthusiast groups that consider the Blue Ridge Parkway a kind of motoring Valhalla.
The Griswolds hit the Blue Ridge Parkway in their 1967 Austin-Healey 3000 MK III. photograph by Tim Robison
Wood most appreciates the quiet and the vistas all along the road. “It’s just very calm and relaxing,” he says. In many ways, this area of North Carolina reminds him of his birthplace in the English Midlands: “Countryside for miles and miles.”
Sometimes, the club draws dozens of members on parkway drives, creating a colorful parade of classic vehicles in British Racing Green, Tartan Red, and Old English White. “We’re all looking out for each other,” Wood says. “It’s a shared experience.”
Wood sees a parallel, too, between the care that these members have for their rare machines and for the road that beckons them on warm, sunny days. “It’s really about preserving these things for as long as we can,” he says.
As for his favorite spot on the parkway? Wood is lost for words. After much deliberation, he finally says, “I can’t single anything out. It wouldn’t be fair. The parkway itself is the destination.”
To read more about this blue ribbon route through western North Carolina, click here.
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