How dull are motorways? Mile after mile of carriageways, two, three, four or even more lanes wide with sweeping curves and gentle inclines, built for speed and devoid of interest. Tarmac and concrete with overhead signs and distance markers repeated again and again in a groundhog sort of way and blue signs that hint at the exotic places which you skirt by but always avoid and never get around to visiting (apart from urban motorways of course).
I used to spend much of my life on them, driving up and down the country, thrashing from one meeting to the next and wearing a groove in the A1M, M1, M6 and M8 to name a few but thankfully those days are over. I still find myself on them nearly every day but now it is only for a short distance. They are clearly designed to handle huge volumes of fast moving traffic in as safe as way as possible but this has resulted in the removal of almost all interesting features. Nearly all motorways look the same. Choose a mile and you could pick it up and put it down almost anywhere in the country and only the signposts would give your location away.
That is if you don’t include the section of the M62 between junction 23 and 21, or the other way round if you prefer. This has to be the best bit of motorway in England, if not the British Isles. It has so much going for it to make it unusually interesting. It has dramatic curves and steep ascents. It cuts between reservoirs and mountain tops, crosses bleak and treeless moorland and even splits itself in two to traverse the Stott Hall Farm house just up from the Booth Wood Reservoir. It passes Scammonden water that has a tower that could have been lifted straight out of The Lord of the Rings and passes underneath a bridge carrying the Pennine Way, Britain’s second longest national trail before rising to the highest point of any motorway in the United Kingdom at Windy Hill on the now sadly infamous Saddleworth Moor. You have to keep your wits about you in this section of a dozen or so miles as it is always busy with traffic crisscrossing the country and you can start in brilliant sunshine at one end and be in a snow storm before you get to the other.
This small bit of the M62 makes up for all the other thousands of tedious miles scattered around the country and it doesn’t matter how many times I drive along it, I never tire of doing so (except when it’s completely blocked with standing traffic). It’s even got a song about it ‘Driving away from home’ by It’s Immaterial:
I’ll tell you what
Why don’t we cross the city limit
And head on down the M62
It’s only thirty nine miles
And forty five minutes to Manchester
So it’s not just me then.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 