Nightmare motorway journeys

Not counting accidents, breakdowns and sheer volume of traffic (granted, they are the most common factors), what’s the worst journey you’ve had on our beloved road system?
Left S Wales for East Midlands at 8pm last night. M50 shut so over the Severn Bridge – sh*tlodas of roadworks on M5, shut M42 and a ridiculous badly-signed diversion that ended up in Stratford which is nowhere near where I wanted to go – get on A46 heading for Cov and M69 to Leicester, then roadworks on A46 means it diverts you off into a series of blacker-than-black B roads…eventually get on M69…where there are roadworks. Got home just before midnight.
No, I didn’t have a satnav, and yes I should have had a map.
To the bods who redirect the traffic, you must be having a laugh 🙄
I know someone will come on and quite rightly say it’s the only time they can do essential maintenance etc but it was a bloody frustrating journey when I just wanted to get home.

There was me thinking it would be a breeze at that time of night!

Left Croydon at 11.15am on a Friday.. got back to Liverpool 11.45pm… It wasn’t that unusual in all honesty… anything before 9pm was exceptional.

M5, floods, overnight.

Pretty sure that’s the worst journey i’ll ever do solo. Things are a bit different now i’ve got a kid!

Snowed to a standstill on the M25 in the middle of the night once. Not fun.

Some trip from Yorkshire to Cornwall has the honour of the most desperate lack of progress from roadworks to accident scenes to roadworks, mainly on the M5.

Oh man – I don’t remember the specifics, but on our way back from holiday on the west coast of France one year, we got off the ferry at Portsmouth at, like, nine o’clock at night after a full day’s travelling, thinking we could just bez up the A34 , on to the M40 then home to Birmingham in a couple or three hours – A34 was shut for roadworks north of the M4 and the diversion I swear wanted to take us all the way to the M25, about another 60 miles on the (already lengthy) day’s driving. Just was not in the mood for it, no satnav but tried to navigate cross country using the map book, kept finding road closures – just a cursed journey, got home at like half two instead of before eleven. there was a tense atmosphere in the car, let me tell you!

M5, floods, overnight.

If that’s from a summer a few years ago, I was coming back from S Wales and left six hours early because I saw that one coming. Avoided the closure by about an hour, apparently.

I once took 12 hours to get from Teesside to Bristol.
That was hitch-hiking, though. and a long time ago 🙂

Yep the summer of all the Gloucester/tweksbury floods, 2007?

M1 about 8 years ago on a hot sunny day. Just purchased a Ford Fiesta that we now loving refer to as ****.

It turns out it didn’t like warm days. It broke down 6 times on what was the hottest day of the year. Each time the traffic came to a stop (heavy traffic jams) it would cut out and wouldn’t start for 30-45 mins.

Oh that was a long journey.

Yep the summer of all the Gloucester/tweksbury floods, 2007?

That’s the one. I had two four-year-olds in the back so was understandly not keen on a night on the M5.

I once got stuck for several hours on the Avon bridge on the M5, a couple of hundred yards downwind of an overturned offal lorry.

it was hot and I didnt have air conditioning…

Coming south on the M9 after a race, massive crawling tailback, massive cramp in both calves, both started about 100 yards after the last turnoff for miles. Proper descent into madness.

M8 2010.

Cars abandoned due to snow.

Eating snow for hydration

Four years ago when a snowstorm caused gridlock in Central Scotland I left the office at 1115 am thinking I could get some brownie points and work from home to be around for my wife who was 8.5 months pregnant. I finally got home at 0720 the next day…

20 hours to travel 25 miles. It was chaos. I did end up having a snowball fight in the fast lane, and building a snowman in the central reservation with the guy in the car behind me.

Probably Stafford to Disneyland Paris by coach

* pickup in Stafford at 5am IIRC
* drive around UK nuclear test area #3 aka Walsall picking up more passengers
* back on M6 West Midlands during rush hour
* wait for over an hour at Worcester Services M5 for a family of bellends who were waiting for us on the northbound side
* Chunnel is closed, inside lane of approach road is a lorry car park prob 15 miles of queuing HGVs
* arrive at Dover 6pm wait for two hours for a boat
* arrive Calais 10pm-ish
* the autoroute is closed after just a few miles, our 76-seater coach along with everyone else is diverted around quaint rural French villages
* face-off in a quaint rural French village between our driver and the driver of an HGV, neither of whom will back up and let the other one through
* gendarmes arrive and sort it out (prob getting on for 3am now, I’m so tired it’s like a living nightmare)
* arrive Disneyland Paris around 4.30 am

50 limit on the M25 during recent resurfacing. Some cockwomble crashed so we sat for ages then moved approx 1 metre every 30 secs for about an hour.

Would not have been so bad but my missus was driving and was using the clutch rather than the brakes to hold the car still, resulting in a completely destroyed clutch 👿 I even mentioned the burning smell in the car but was condescendingly told it was from the accident.

Newquay to Worcester. May Bank Holiday 1992. M5 round about Avonmouth. Didn’t move for about 8 hours. Total journey was about 19 hours.

Castle Morton rave, near Malvern.

6 hour commute to work, around 21 miles away. M6 Thelwall Viaduct closed in high winds. Absolutely busting for a slash, eventually shuffled off bent double to find the meagrest cover in front of hundreds of people all bored and looking for the smallest distraction.

much like Pondo, arrived back from france in Dover approx 8PM after a full days drive in france. M1 shut. awful diversion in place, arrive back in Newcastle at 5am…

bigG – Member

I did end up building a snowman in the central reservation with the guy in the car behind me.

Is that a euphemism?

2 years commuting between the lakes and warrington…
3 years off and on Rochdale to Warringotn on the M62/60
Commuting from Coventry on the M6 towards the M1 junction
Anything involving the M1/M6/A14 intersection in the late 90’s

7hrs lakes to Warrington one day, listened to the entire first day of an Ashes Test, was meant to be a 1 day return trip so no hotel booked, ended up at my mates house in near Stoke and drove home the next day.
Rochdale to Cardiff on the day before V Festival, combined with a puncture and needing the AA to release the spare wheel (transit problem) while been stuck in a queue from 15-14 on the M6 about 9hrs in total
M25 closed coming from Dartford way to Rugby about 8hrs in the works van with no radio, after leaving the motorway we were using empty 1l sample bottles to piss into in the back. We even got out a couple of hundred meters before a garage and walked in for some food then walked back.
Anything involving the Thelwall Viaduct while it was 50mpg and down to one side.

For work I’ve hit every motorway in the UK except the stuff in the south west they are all good when they are good…

4 hours parked just north of the south Gloucester exit going southbound on the way to work about 4-5 years ago when some Police official thought it a good idea to do a fingertip search of the verge for a gun that “might have been thrown from the vehicle” after an armed robbery of Blooms nursery.

Needles to say they found nothing and spent a lot of other people’s money that day.

8hrs to go from Edinburgh to Erskine sometime in 1997 I think. Started to snow in Edinburgh at around 15:00 so left site. By the time we got on to the M8 it was already packed with traffic, 2 hours later couldn’t even read the signposts for snow drifts and had no idea whereabouts on the motorway we were!

Left Croydon at 11.15am on a Friday.. got back to Liverpool 11.45pm… It wasn’t that unusual in all honesty… anything before 9pm was exceptional.

On the plus side, at least you were leaving Croydon 😉

Penzance to Oxford the weekend after that total eclipse, took about 12 hours driving a minibus full of complete ****.

Arras to Leeds by coach.

Leaving Arras there’s a problem with the coach. The coach driver had been to fill up and forgotten to put the cap back on the fuel tank. Finally located, after a delay. Missed planned ferry but that’s OK there’s another one later. Except it then dumps us onto the UK motorway network at just the wrong time.

Get lost getting out of Dover.

Finally hit the M25 at rush hour. Spend quite a long time on the M25 at rush hour.

Replacement driver is waiting for us at the services on the M1. Only problem is that our driver doesn’t have enough hours left to get to those services. We stop at different services short of the planned handover and wait for replacement driver to turn up.

Once he does we get back onto the coach. Coach doesn’t start properly. We get off the coach again.

Finally both coach and driver are ready to set off. Start making progress and hit roadworks.

Get back to Leeds at about 1.30am. Only problem is that my car’s parked in a car park which shuts at 10.30. Having been told we’d be back at about 8.30 this didn’t overly concern me when I parked it.

Taxi home. Run back to rescue the car the next morning.

Watched an HGV plough into a petrol station which then burst into flames.
Not everyone got out.
That gave me nightmares.

UK last year, all within a month of each other: West Lancs to Folkestone, 10 hours. West Lancs to North Kent, 8 hours. West Lancs to Ashford, 10 hours.

France, 2009: Lyons to Carpentras (via Monteliamr for Etape sign on), 12 hours. (TBH the autoroute du soleil is pretty bad each year, but that was murderous – even the N roads were stationary!)

Did Manchester to Rye in a little over 14 hours last year. The return trip took about 5.

This is one reason why I no longer jump in the car on Fridays after work and motor off for weekends away climbing or cycling.

Being stuck in traffic for many hours on the M6 in Cheshire has actually made Mrs Gti ill; she is in so much pain that she hasn’t actually sat down for five months and now, at last, we have a diagnosis of spondylolisthesis of the lower spine.

I take your floods, snowdrifts, diversions and raise you 2 young children stuck in a queue at tea time! Horrendous.

On our way back from Plymouth to Sheffield via a sunday afternoon post wedding gathering near Honiton. The kids had slep all the way from Plymouth to Honiton so they were full of beans. Plan was to leave Honiton around 4 and try to keep the children awake until a stop for some food around 5.30. Stop for an hour and leave with the kids in their pyjamas, keep them awake for as long as possible and then let them sleep.

Issue one was the bottle of ginger beer that exploded all over my lap after opening it when sat at some lights. Cue stop to clear up the sticky mess (fnar fnar) and having to sit on a towel for the rest of the journey.

But that is nothing compared to what was to follow.

At 5 both kids fall asleep. Not to worry, we’ll let them have 20 mins and then wake them up when we stop for food in about 20 miles. This is just as are approaching Gordano service on the M5. This is where we made the fatefull decision. It was just a bit early to stop for food, the kids had just dropped off and they wouldn’t be hungry yet after a late lunch. Let carry on to Michael Wood we said.

Then it all started unraveling. The matrix sign flashed up. Incident J14. 10 min delay. ****. Oh well its only 10 mins. Lets stick with it. Go past the M4 junction and the point of no return and there is the back of the queue. Shit a brick.

1 hour later the kids wake up have had way to much sleep at just the wrong time. The are hungry and grumpy. We have moved about 2 miles.

We sit in the queue for another 1h30. Trying to placate a hungry 9mo and 2.5yo with no food and nothing to but an endless queue of cars to look at. There is no reasoning with a 9 month old. I’m sure at one stage the whole car was just tearfully screaming.

Our mood was not helped when after 2h30 in the queue when we finally got to the front there was just a traffic womble stood by his car seeming contemplating whether he could be arsed to move the cones.

The service station was not much better, being sunday evening the food counter was mostly closed, it was rammed with other parenets in similar predicaments and the kids mood did not improve. Getting back in the car was blessed releif as we continued to Sheffield without further delay, having to change drivers ever 30mins to fend of the tiredness.

Horrendous

I’ve just remembered my best/worst motorway journey!

Stuck on a coach on the M1 or M6 heading to Global Gathering (a massive rave basically, 50,000+ people from memory). Traffic was gridlocked on the way there after a major accident quite close to the venue.

It was a melting hot day and after a while we were all allowed off the coach once the driver was satisfied the traffic wasn’t going to start moving any time soon. About 90% of the other traffic around us seemed to be heading to the festival.

Cue lots of people all tuning into the same radio station in their cars/buses and us all having an impromptu rave standing on the motorway 🙂

Must have been about 10 years ago now.

Disneyland coach bloke wins. Imagine that with a 70+ other smelly people and their smelly screaming kids. Horrid.

portsmouth to Leeds, baking hot sun, no air con, via M25 (don’t ask) and a child that vomited every 20 mins and screamed the whole way. Had to stop at every motorway service station on the way to mop up vomit/change clothes/ rest/ took 11 hours.

do train journeys count?

got euston-glasgow night train. pissheads several coaches back dicking about pulling the emergency cord. train eventually stopped for a hour in the middle of nowhere… before Watford. train waited until the cops were at the station to arrest them pillocks. then they prolly needed a driver change due to exceeding shift hours at Crewe. then they had to take the sleeper cars off at Carlisle (not sure if they normally do that?). Then the train broke down, while still at carlisle. then a thunderbird towed the train to glasgow.

all the frickin families on board were whinging and complaining because they wanted to cross the border as the sun rose, and their journey had been ruined because of that.

then eventually we arrive in Glasgow, pushing lunchtime, only to find (even in the days before mobile phones), that the entire scottish and northern england weak lemon drink club had got there first all with their cameras and notepads to witness a train arriving in a non-standard configuration.

and british rail refused to refund a penny, becaue the delays were “beyond their control”

I recall many years ago getting out of the car to fetch my sandwiches and flask from the boot. That was in the outside lane of the M1 near Luton one Sunday evening.

From North Yorkshire to Cornwall in 2012. It was ok till that bit between Bristol & Exeter which took about 3 hours. Then the weather was crap all week & the place was jam packed with kids.
Never again will I go to that hugely over rated place.

Had a few major hold ups over the years but the most memorable one was the M60 when I was working as a van driver.

It was one lunchtime and I was returning to Depot for the Afternoon run when the Matrix came on ” incident slow down ” oh well probably just a bent wing and door which is standard on the 60 between Trafford and the M61 but this time was different.

A car transporter was on fire on the hard shoulder and the diesel tank had split and the fuel was across lanes 1 & 2 which were on fire. Interesting. Police had not arrived and I honestly didn’t know what to do as the fire was spreading across the lanes. Stay or boot it before it covers lanes 3 & 4 ? Well the Police arrived just as I was going to boot it past and through their Jeep across stopping us from going.

They then back us up as far as possible from the fire. 4 hours before we were allowed through. Met some nice people that day, a Tesco driver who I had a Brew with, the transporter driver who told us he had gone over a mattress that was in the middle of the lanes which wrapped around his propshaft ( oh err ) then ripped the tank apart.

Watching the tanks of the cars explode as the fire got to each car on the transporter was interesting. Think about 11 cars got destroyed along with the transporter.

Not the worst journey ever but I got stuck on a massive jam on a hot day travelling south on the m23

There was an ice cream van stuck in the same queue which opened up for business

Heading back to London from up north somewhere as kids, my mum driving, and we were stuck on the M6 for 5hrs after a lorry overturned and went through the central reservation. Baking hot day, everyone just turned their engines off and were sunbathing on the car roofs or wandering round on the verge sharing food & drink. We were only young. Thank God the car was well stocked with food! When we finally got moving, we went into the next services and they were of course rammed as everyone who’d been stuck in the queue was now desperate for the loo and for food.

A few years ago I was trying to drive from somewhere round south Cheshire up to Lancaster in horrendously windy conditions. Normally just straight up the M6 but they’d closed Thelwall Viaduct so I had to go M56 then M60 but as I got to the M60, they closed Barton Bridge as well so I had to go all the way round the M60 anticlockwise to get to the M61 and there up to the M6. Took an extra 3hrs with all the traffic and the storms.