After the cruise and carriage, the Open Road | News

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The luxury cruise and rail revival promised that the journey could be as important as the destination. A new wave of curated car rides takes it one step further, trading the view from the deck for the freedom of the road. HunterMoss makes this clear with its 2027 calendar, led by a first route from the Basque Country to Bordeaux.

Over the past decade, luxury travel has increasingly fallen in love with the journey itself. The big cruise lines returned, reimagined for a generation that wanted suites instead of cabins and slow passages between lesser-known ports. The railways followed, with restored carriages and revived sleeping routes that made traveling a holiday in itself. Both are based on the same attractive idea: that arriving slowly and watching a landscape unfold along the way is richer than simply landing.

However, both share a silent limitation. No matter how beautiful the view from a ship’s deck or carriage window, the traveler remains a passenger. The route is fixed, the timetable is someone else’s and the country passing by remains just out of reach. You see the vineyard; you don’t stop in it. You see a glimpse of the port city; you don’t linger over lunch while the afternoon slips by.
This is the gap in which a new generation of curated car journeys finds themselves. A road can be interrupted. A detour to a hilltop village, an unplanned hour in a roadside cellar, a longer table than the route allowed: the experience bends toward the traveler rather than the other way around. Riding restores something that the deck and carriage cannot, namely freedom of choice, and with it a more intimate sense of place. This change is important for travelers who find immersion and flexibility increasingly important.

HunterMoss has built its name exactly on this premise. The experiential travel company designs slow-paced trips with just a few hours behind the wheel each day, for intimate groups who want to feel a destination rather than tick it off. The car, often something rare and beautiful, is never the purpose of the journey. In the company’s own frame, it is a symbol of freedom and access, and a fresh lens through which to experience a place, its food and wine, its roads and its people.

For 2027, HunterMoss introduces a new travel calendar led by the first route from the Spanish Basque Country to Bordeaux. It starts in San Sebastian, where the Bay of Biscay meets one of Europe’s most celebrated tables, a city of pintxos counters and fresh, local txakoli. From there the route winds north, crossing France through the pine forests of the Landes before arriving in the great wine country of Bordeaux, with its eighteenth-century grandeur and the legendary castles of the Medoc and Saint-Emilion close by.

Along the way we deliberately drive quietly, for a few hours every day without rushing, with time to stop, taste and stay a while. [The X-night journey departs in [month] 2027, from [price] per person.]It’s a route built less around kilometers than around the table, the cellar and the coast, and the freedom to follow them at your own pace.
It’s also a trip aimed squarely at the guest who has outgrown the standard five-star vacation and for whom another flawless but redeemable resort no longer holds much appeal. After the cruise and the carriage, the open road offers something they’ve been quietly searching for: a luxury not measured in thread count or square footage, but in accessibility, spontaneity, and a real connection to the places they pass through. Judging by HunterMoss’ 2027 calendar, road travel could be the next chapter of luxury travel.