parallel roads, places to stop, must-see detours? anything to avoid hours of grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
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depends where your setting off from, you could go A4 slough, newbury, bath, bristol or drop further down and take the A303 past stonehenge etc,if your north you could go via thame, wantage, hungerford, avebury etc loads really google map it 
I go to Bristol quite often as we have an office there. Usually take the train though, two hours from Paddington and get to relax or do some work there and back. Buy the ticket a few days ahead of the journey and you get quite a good deal.
Ridden down there a few times in the summer and went along the A4, not a great journey.
From Romford
Was planning A12,A406,A4,M4,M32…
Happy for suggestions
Every freakin’ Friday that I try to go west on the M4 it’s usually shut or utterly bllxed :crazy: Avoid it entirely. A4?
Well we took a day trip to Bristol (or rather, a stately home just past there called Tyntesfield House, owned by the National Trust) during the summer and from Newbury we took the A4 to Bath. We loved that road, lots of interesting twisty bits, some lovely views, towns and villages, and interesting sites like Silbury Hill. And coming back the same way was great as we saw sites we missed on way there, like the White Horse!
Got a bit lost after Bath as I was tempted to take an interesting-looking steep road from a roundabout and we ended up in the Cotswolds but after getting lost for about 20 minutes, took out the trusty Nokia N95 which navigated us the rest of the way with no probs.
The only negative part was Bristol - major traffic problems there and the bit we went through was not nice at all.
after north circular, follow sign for kew bridge and A316 m3 follow that get on a303 then somehow without getting lost on salisbury plain find A36 takes you into bristol from the south and has some nice bendy bits
The M4 is one of the roads I love to hate.
I have not ridden it, but plenty of times I have driven the A4 from Reading to Chippenham and the A420 from there to Bristol and back to avoid the M4 tedium. Usually there is not much traffic, and as a pre-motorway trunk road it is wide and lots of sweeping bends. Avoid Bath, and allow extra time, the roads are good for 50-60mph not 70mph+!
I’ve driven the M4 too often, its just a queue to enter London. I suppose on the bike you can ride the bus lane but haven’t tried that yet.