Texas occupies a strange position in the British travel imagination – simultaneously over-familiar as a cultural reference point and deeply under-visited as an actual destination. The version of Texas that most British travellers carry in their heads is not wrong exactly, but it is radically incomplete, and the gap between the Texas of cultural shorthand and the Texas that exists on the ground is wide enough to constitute a genuine surprise.

Size Is the First Thing to Reckon With

Texas is larger than France. This is not a statistic that registers properly until you are in it, driving a road that runs straight to the horizon with nothing interrupting the view in any direction. The state contains mountains, desert, canyon country, Gulf Coast, pine forest, and one of the largest urban concentrations in North America, and none of these share much geography with the others. Getting around it requires a