Paved or Unpaved?

What's your preference?  A paved (sealed) road or unpaved (gravel) road?

Somewhere in Tanzania (BigSky Adventures)

I was recently reading The Hubb forum and these two contrasting posts caught my eye.
The first post was requesting information on a route from London to Cape Town, with as little paved roads as possible.

Unpaved Roads

 The post below, was rather more hesitant and preferred paved roads from Germany to South Africa.

Paved Roads

Personally, I prefer gravel roads.  The World Bank has data on the percentage of paved roads each country has.

Roads, paved (% of total roads)

Data from World Bank

Feel free to add your thoughts on the Hubb forum.

Gravel roads...

Gravel roads are diminishing as the black bitumen creeps over the old dusty back roads of Australia.  It is getting harder to find those original gravel roads that have been immune to the creep of tarmac - yet one website in Australia is encouraging people to list their 4x4 routes and share them.

I stumbled upon 4x4Earth Australia in an effort to find alternative routes between the major cities. I was after gravel - lots of gravel.  My destination for the excursion was based on the 4x4 Earth route: Canberra - Goulburn: for those who think tar sucks.  With a title like that, I just had to follow the suggested GPS track.

I departed Canberra close to 6am so as to allow myself time to explore before beginning the full commute to the office.  Sunrise was schedule for 0626 which was perfect as I had a few kilometers to cover before the detour.