Tarmac Tales

I’d been hunting for an animated map of the UK motorway network – you know, one of those hypnotic ones that show blue lines crawling across the country like an outbreak of concrete measles. And sure enough, there it was: the story of how Britain took to the open road, then immediately decided to close half of it for maintenance.

It all began with the Preston By-Pass in 1958 – eight miles of sheer optimism, the first proper motorway. The Prime Minister at the time, Harold Macmillan, cut the ribbon with the enthusiasm of a man who thought traffic jams were something that happened to other people. Within weeks, the surface was peeling up like cheap lino, and the whole thing had to be resurfaced. Thus began our national tradition: build it fast, dig it up faster.

By the 1960s, we were unstoppable. Engineers carved through hills, farms, and occasionally someone’s back garden in the name of progress. The M1 was the glory road, a symbol of modernity. Britain’s first true north-south artery – though to drive it today, you’d think it was still under construction. Half a century later, we’re still “adding a lane,” which seems to mean narrowing the others and installing average-speed cameras every 20 yards.

The M6 followed – the backbone of Britain, if the backbone occasionally seized up from overuse. Then came the M25, our proudest folly, built so Londoners could experience gridlock in a full 360-degree panorama. It’s the only motorway in the world where you can set off at dawn, circle the capital, and arrive home in time for next week’s breakfast.

Each motorway has its personality. The M4 has a faint whiff of ambition – “London to Wales, via a lifetime of roadworks.” The M62 crosses the Pennines like a civil-engineering dare, featuring a farm in the middle because the owner refused to move. The M5, meanwhile, is a slow-motion migration of caravans and melting ice creams, inching toward Cornwall in scenes resembling the retreat from Dunkirk.

By the 1980s, we’d paved the nation into submission. Then came the great existential question: what now? Build more? No – we invented the smart motorway, a concept as logical as “self-toasting bread.” Lanes vanish, speed limits think for themselves, and drivers stare at overhead signs saying “Obey All Signals” – which, when blank, is oddly philosophical.

Still, there’s something endearing about our motorways. They’re the arteries of a nation that still believes in movement, even when stuck behind a lorry doing 56 mph overtaking another lorry doing 55. They represent our collective yearning for freedom, which we immediately undermine by scheduling roadworks in both directions for the next 18 months.

Watching that animated map, you can almost feel the optimism – the idea that if you just lay enough asphalt, the future will come roaring down it in a gleaming Austin Cambridge. Instead, we got the M25 and a nation of sat-nav zombies. But still, I can’t help but love it. The UK motorway network is a masterpiece of over-engineering, under-planning, and sheer British bloody-mindedness.

We built it, we curse it, and we queue on it. It’s our greatest monument – not to speed, but to patience.