Let us be honest about Basingstoke. It is a large, modern town on the M3, built up rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s as an overspill town for London, with a sprawl of housing estates, business parks and so many roundabouts that it is sometimes called Doughnut City. It is not a place anyone visits for its beauty. But it is very good at what riders need from it: fuel, food and a quick way back onto the road.
There is a little more depth to it if you look. Jane Austen was born and grew up in the village of Steventon, a few kilometres south-west, where her father was rector, and she attended balls in Basingstoke as a young woman. The town has a statue of her outside the Willis Museum. On the eastern edge of town, in the village of Old Basing, stand the ruins of Basing House, once one of the largest private houses in England, which was besieged for years during the Civil War and finally stormed and destroyed by Oliver Cromwell's troops in 1645.
The landscape around Basingstoke is part of the North Hampshire Downs, a gentle chalk upland with rolling fields, woods and small villages. The lanes to the west and south, towards Overton, Whitchurch and the Test valley, are quiet and pleasant, with gentle curves and little traffic. The River Test, one of the most famous chalk streams in the world for fly fishing, runs clear and cold through water meadows. Further south, the roads towards Stockbridge and Salisbury cross open downland with long views.
Basingstoke has fuel stations, supermarkets, fast food and every kind of service, all easily accessible from the ring road. The town centre is dominated by a large shopping centre, Festival Place, and is best avoided on a bike. The M3 and the A303 are the main routes west and can be busy, especially on Friday afternoons and summer weekends. Use Basingstoke for what it is good at, then head off into the countryside.