Secrets of The Motorway - M25 Part 1
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- Опубликовано: 6 янв 2024
- #m25 #motorway #infrastructure #driving #cars
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In this video we begin to explore the M25... perhaps the most notorious motorway in all of the UK. It's surrounds London and was the left overs of a failed road building project leading to some interesting choices and decisions.
It seems to do everything wrong and I don't think there are many that have a good word to say about the M25 but it's the only motorway left so I've no option but to tackle this giant. 
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'The project will cost £317 million pounds, and when it's finished, it will make no difference at all' 😂😂
' The Roman artefacts are lovingly positioned next to the toilets' 😂😂
Keep on keepin' on Jon
The term "merde al la ventilateur" was the best one today :D
its these sort of comments that keep us comming back :)
Ah, but in between the start and the finish we ge to enjoy many more months of lower capacity, speed restrictions and delays at this location. So it will seem great when it's finished.
Absolutely accurate about J10. The busiest route ie A3 west to M25 North will still have traffic lights even after the £317 million!
A3 west to M25 East will be free flowing but nobody ever goes that way.
Love your videos and love the dry humor as well. Sweet, magic, awesome!
As a French guy, "should the merde hit the ventilateur" was such a lovely touch 👌
🤣 Indeed.
I think Jon is a secret 'Rail Enthusiast' who is not yet out, considering the number of times we take a diversion away from his road analyses... Any / all transport interests me as well as industrial history - so all such 'diversions' are greatly appreciated! Cheers Jon, looking forward to many more great videos in 2024.
if everyone who doesn't enjoy driving didn't have to the roads would be a lot nicer
I see so many people on their phones or doing whatever else.. if those people were in a train they wouldn't be a danger
@@whoeveriam0iam14222 God yes, I just want to change my horn so everytime I double-tap it, it shouts "get off your phone!" (one would be "FUCK OFF" and three would be "GET OFF THE ROAD YOU BLIND BAT". Long-continuous hold would be "AAAAAAAAAAH!")
As a railway engineer I would enjoy listening to his mockery of railways if he started a series...
Anybody who makes these sort of videos is definitely on the spectrum. I'm the same with rivers. The amount of time I spend on Google Earth tracing a rivers course from source to sea. Oh and underground lost rivers. Martin Zero and Pat Dickinson for those😂
@@antonycharnock2993what about people who watch the history of motorways from Australia and aren’t even English?
Quick, build some more motorways! We can’t let this series end!
Have we had former motorways such as the A102(M)?
Secrets of the A roads?
@YLTH as much as we want that they are quite a few too many A Roads
He's not covered the A1(M) yet, so there's another motorway or three
@@michaelkeeley8594Ones to look at are the Primary ones like A1 London to Edinburgh, A2 London to Dover, A3 London to Brighton, etc.
The 2 digits are regional and the 3 digits are spur/connector roads so that's how you can split them up.
That’s the quickest I’ve ever travelled from Dartford to junction 10 in my life! 😂
I can remember them slowly building the bits of the M25 and then the final joining together. It’s fascinating to see how years of traffic misery culminated in years of traffic misery.
Welcome to the M25, the world's first orbital carpark! 😀
Finishing the 'secrets of the motorways' project with the highway to hell!
Highway AROUND hell
@@dinth Nah, that's Phoenix, AZ's three-ring circus, the 101, 202, and 303.
Thurrock?
@@dinth
Naah mate. It's what you make of it.
Like all fings.
@@waynemackie3113 Turdtowns has just done Essex's gems.
"you'll find the former RAF winsley airfield, it was built during the small disagreement between 1939-44"
absolute killer line
In the (sort of) words of the late and wonderful Sir Terry Pratchett, the M25 being circular manages to make tail backs so bad they become tail forwards.
Genius, traffic solves itself
I think...regardless of how they got there...most people who end up in Tunbridge Wells would wonder 'what's gone wrong' 😂
I love the ending where you pause for cars passing :)
Junction 9 was built in the fashion it was so as to support the Leatherhead by-pass which runs parallel to the M25 and was built by Surrey CC at the same time as the motorway.
The land had been reserved as it was originally going to be used to complete the extension of the Chessingto South railway branch to Leatherhead.
Another belter of a video. I can remember navigating the parts of the London Orbital that had been built in my Dad's lorry during 1982 / 83. It involved driving on completed sections, then leaving and driving through towns to rejoin further on!
How did they transport and reposition the M25 sections from the back of the lorry to where they are now?
A logical Irishman wants to know. 🙃
7:00 I saw the VC10 over Wisley on its maiden flight (was living in Horsley at the time). My mum didn't believe 9y/o me until she read about it in the paper the next day
Hi Jon. Another great video as always.
Once you've finished Secrets of the Motorways you can continue the series as there are still the motorways of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as well as numerous A roads(e.g. the A14, the A55, the A38 Devon Expressway).
a14 and a38 would be good .....
M12 at Craigavon
A19, A30, A50 just to name a few more
We have a motorway that's split into two parts, a roundabout in a motorway and a bunch of ideas for motorways around Belfast that never happened due to some troubles.
Yup, NI motorways are ripe for getting the piss taken out of them.
@@SoupMagooshThe A19 between Darington and Newcastle was originally the A1 before they built the A1(M) between there and Newcastle.
Well done Jon for taking on the behemoth that is the M25...this is going to be a multi-multi-parter....
It seems so de regeur now that it’s almost impossible to imagine what it was like without the M25 being there, but I can certainly recall how difficult it was to get to places before, especially around Dartford Tunnel where a lot of the A13 was still single carriageway 🤯
I really liked the Jay Foreman video from years ago about the orbital projects and where weird bits of Road exist with wildly elaborate junctions considering the small volume of traffic that they see, so this served as a great refresher! That bit where you go down hill to the A21 junction has been the scene of a few interesting occurrences that I have witnessed where people have only realised which lane they need at the last moment and almost caused a complete catastrophe 😮 Thankfully I’ve yet to see one that succumbed to an actual accident! 🤞
Excellent content as ever. You even managed to include Roman relics, an abandoned airfield and an abandoned and demolished railway station, so it ticked loads of boxes for me 😎🍀🍻👍
shout out to jay foreman and the map men, map men, map map men men men :D
Who remembers Richard Stilgoe and piano on the J3 bridge, which was built as part of the A20 upgrade long before M25 completion, singing about "the bridge that goes nowhere"?
Clackers Lane was also picked for the service area because that part of the motorway was notorious for thick fog whenever anybody looked at it sideways resulting in hundreds of crashes over the years up to the infamous 1984 one, the theory was if they put buildings on the area that continuously produced heat, it would reduce the amount of fog that hung about in the air, it worked as there hadn’t been any major accidents due to fog on that stretch of the motorway since.
Talking of thick fog, there also a memorial about hundred yards west of the fort on Reigate hill where a USAF B17 bomber crashed into the hill in thick fog during that little disagreement in the early 1940’s although one of the more obscure conspiracies I’ve heard is it was shot down by friendly fire.
Many years ago I worked at the property advisory company that sold the Clacket Lane site .One of the reasons it was used (I am pretty sure) was that the land was owned by a government department and the govt wanted to be the ones benefiting from the land sale proceeds and not anyone else.
This brought back memories from 1981-83, when I worked in Sevenoaks. The Group HR director seemed to spend more time trying to stop the M25 going through the Darenth Valley between the A20/M20 and the western end of the M26 (8 miles) than he spent on his day job. He thought it quite reasonable to go south-east from Swanley on the M20 and then westwards on the M26 (17 miles). Anyway, they did build the Darenth Valley stretch and I was so impressed by this use of senior management time that I left after less than two years.
This video is remarkable: it is remarkable because the traffic on the M25 is actually moving, which is quite a rare sight.
3:26 I live in Kent and have always wondered why this junction is like this and why it feels like when you’re going along the M26 you just end up on the M25 all of a sudden... thanks Jon.
Supermarket sweep 🎶😂😂
Ahhh the M25, Britains largest car park. I do like the Dartford crossing though, you can see for miles.
That’s about the only highlight really.
Cheers Jon 👍🏼
The M25 is what got me to watch this channel in the first place. Jon tried to drive 1000 miles on the M25 to commemorate 1000 subscribers.
as this wraps up, i’d love to see more coverage of infrastructures in general. whatever you end up putting out, i’ll be watching. cheers!
I remember the controversy of the route of the motorway at Leatherhead, there was a great deal of nimbyism going on. The Reigate hill slip road was a lot steeper than now as you say, it's bloody long now. And the road works at J10 are affecting not just the local area but a great deal more, the town where I live has increased traffic detoured from there and we must be almost 15 miles away.
ah yes. LAMP. Leatherhead and Ashtead Motorway Protestors. They wanted the motorway to be put in a tunnel.
The one we've all been waiting for!
Waited ages for this one, was hoping to find out why they used noisy concrete on large sections...
money
@@hendrixinfinity3992 great detail
Those concrete surfaces makes my car noisy
Because it's cheaper and quicker to build that way - it's also a lot stronger and you don't need so much depth compared to modern flexible blacktop surfacing
@@GryphLane how come it's not more widespread if there are that many benefits?
Hope the outro saying "see you next time for another exciting episode" means youve found more to cover, i love this series and your style. If this is the end, i look forward to whatever you choose to do next 😊
He's only covered nine junctions out of thirty on the M25, so there's at least two more episodes on this motorway
A282 sounds remarkably like an owl call 🤙
Back in the day you could get off the Channel Tunnel and stay on the motorway network, and not find a service station until North of Birmingham on the M6.
love how jon obviously likes cars, driving and transport infrastructure but realises that more lanes! more roads! isn't the answer to transport problems nowadays. cracking video!
You said that if you’re not paying attention at Junction 5 you end up at Tunbridge Wells…. When actually you end up in Maidstone on the M20. You have to turn off the M26 and take a ridiculously tight turn to get onto the A21!!!!
Extra helping of sarcasm this week Jon - I love it👍🏻
My old stomping ground. In the 1970s we'd have a family outing to the Bigger Hill airshow, remember my dad taking the M25 from Reigate to Godstone, and then picking up the A25. In the late 1980s had friends living in Tunbridge Wells and Swanley, so have fond memories of this section of the M25.
In the early 1990s I was working in Kidderminster, and a colleague from the head office in Sweden visited by car, complained that there wasn't a service station between Dover and Kidderminster, M2, M25, M40.
When we bought our house in Coulsdon, there was an item on one of the local searches involving a viaduct bridge over Chipstead Valley with an extension of the M23 going north from the M25. It would’ve gone through Cane Hill or Rickman Hill park and connected with one of the arterial routes into London at Mitcham, Sutton or Croydon. Thankfully, never built.
I passed my driving test in 1987. One of the first things I did with my mates was to drive all the way round the M25. Sad, but true😊 it cost me 8 quid in petrol.
That was a Friday night for some of us :D
i love this channel. learning about the history of our motorway system and its reasoning etc is all great, but i genuinely think i stay for the satirical comedy. keep it up please john, and i am devilishly fine thank you! :D
I’ve said it before and will no doubt say it again, brilliant! My local motorway that I’ve travelled many times and still learnt more about it from you. Looking forward to the next part, this must have taken ages to film! Well done, expertly done once more.
Use to live just down the road (A217) from Junction 8 and my nan lived in Ashtead I walked one time from Ashted to Junction 8 one weekend when it was still being built :)
Does anyone else remember the 'M25' bridge built over the A20 at Swanley (J3) in the 70's and stood there totally isolated and forlorn until they built the M25 in the mid 80's? Great piece of foresight...except for the fact that after 10 years they realised it wasn't big enough(!), so no hard shoulder on that bit of the M25.
Can also remember the hanging flyover at the Darenth Interchange at Junction 2 in the early 1970's as well the one at the Swanley/A20/M25 junction 3 with no where to go southwards until the mid to late 1980's.
1. fuck yeah!
2. more super market sweep!
3. any plans for the future?
I've had in my head for ages audio of Jon finally saying "as you may have noticed, I've been scraping the bottom of the barrel for a while, and I'm afraid to say we've now finally run out of motorways"
LOVE, LOVE LOVE THIS!!!
BRILLIANT!! 🎉👌🏻
(And now taking the caps lock off)....
Great work Jon!
Interesting, the Leatherhead area. I'm sure I remember back at the time the route was being mooted / planned, there was an old guy being interviewed on a piece of old 'Nationwide' footage and he had his rifle in hand, telling the interviewer how he'd shoot anyone who came to try and get him out to build the road.
Not sure if that's why the route around there was changed but it could be(?)
You're right with that mess at J10 as well. I remember when the Wisley interchange was first being built and now it's a hot s**t mess all over again! I've driven it a few times recently from when that work was first starting and the amount of trees cut down there is absolutely shocking! 😔🤬
Brilliant episode - cheers Jon! 👋🏻
That junction 10 bullshittery is in full flow right now.
Thanks Jon! Love the series and the channel in general! Have some diesel money! Or get the misses something nice from the petrol station 😁 Happy New Year! 🎉
So right about junction ten !!! Spot on!
@4:48 I feel compelled to say Clacket lane services is called because there is a road that goes over it called Clacket Lane.
Was originally going to be called Titsey woods but was thought the name wouldn’t be taken seriously.
You can drive over Clacket lane to go from north to south services to access the hotel there. However it is restricted to that purpose only. I did walk the bridge once and was amused on the south side
To see a sign saying no pedestrians. Well I was in my companies lorry at the time and remember if they were to stop me going back to the other side 1. How would I get back and 2. How would I explain that to the controller lol. Lucky for me they didn’t and I never tried that again.
There is also a nature walk off Clacket Lane.
We don't care if you walk over the bridge, we just can't give the code to the barriers so you can drive over
I am amazed the video shows traffic actually moving on the M25
The Junction 10 improvements are essentially for safety. North bound on the A3 fast traffic encounters a slip road from Ripley, a layby with traffic turning out of Wisley RHS, and a slip road to the M25 on a blind left hand bend. This makes it the most dangerous motorway junction in the country, with accidents every week. Of course, slowing traffic to 50mph would probably do the job nearly as well.
"Bullsh**ery" (I hope I'm "spelling" that properly.. 2 't's maybe?) I love it. I will try to use it several times in the upcoming week. Thank you, Jon for boosting my vocabulary - great video too!
Can’t believe you didn’t mention that one of the bridges in this section was used as a filming location for the crash site at the beginning of film “Morons from Outer Space” staring Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones just before the motorway opened
I remember that film, it was terrible!
Another thing that's still in place at Wisley towards the east end of the runway is the Ockham VOR. This is an air traffic control radio navigation beacon, one of 4 that designates the final holding points for planes going into Heathrow. If you've ever come into Heathrow from the South West, you will have passed over this and probably circled over it (they actually turn 180deg at this point and then fly back for 1 minute before doing another 180 to head back to the beacon). Not sure how long it will be there, since ground based navigation is being replaced by GPS.
Taylor Wimpey now own the old airfield site and have stated at the recent planning appeal that the VOR Beacon is being decommissioned and will not be used in the new few months.!!
I managed the Ground Investigations at RAF Wisley in 2019 which preceeded the main construction works starting.
The junction was planned before the houses although there was a preliminary application being submitted by the then landowner.
The fuel tanks at RAF Wisley were still present under the apron which made coring "interesting" - as was a load of asbestos material, which was nice...
Can you confirm you as to my knowledge it has never been a RAF base at Wisley??
Excellent video, Jon. I live in Reigate these days so am very familiar with this part of the M25. Apparently, there was a plan to tunnel much of the M25 through Reigate hill - it might have been a damn site quieter!
I also understand the Merstham section was horrendously difficult to build due to all the old mining tunnels and shafts in that area!
Near Reigate fort is a whole set of tunnels built in WWII - every so often someone gets in there and then they get sealed again!
I wasn't expecting an adam something esque dig at road buidling
Cyclists can cross the Dartford crossings, they used to have specially built buses that provided a service but it is now just a van.
When I did it back in the early 1990s they had a pickup.
Yes... See here for some footage of those buses and a bit more Dartford Crossing history ruclips.net/video/rQsk1r2_jwo/видео.html
Yep, I've used that. Cycling on the actual crossing is prohibited. There's a pretty rigorous scheme of "no cycling" signs for the A282 north of the Thames, I believe.
As for the south side, a FOI a decade ago suggests that cycling is actually allowed on the A282 between J2 and J1A. I couldn't quite believe that, so I checked in person and rode to Darenth Interchange... and yep. You can legally cycle (or walk, or ride a horse...) onto the A282. 😂
North Kent resident here and today I learned some new stuff.
Supermarket Sweep this time! Great video.
THANK YOU dear god that was hurting my brain trying to remember
@@pigpenpete If you want your brain to be ruined, look up the vocal version with Dale Winton singing it...
Kudos John for producing such an engaging video about the M25 motorway! The attention to detail and storytelling skills truly bring out the unique charm of this crap road. Great work!
"....and when it`s finished it won`t make any difference at all." How true that is.
One of my most travelled on motorways. Use it a few times a week. Thanks for pointing out about the old station and sidings as I have been in there a few times to work on the mobile phone mast, but always wondered about the derelict buildings on the site. One thing you forgot to mention about junction 5 is that you have to keep right to leave the motorway on the A21, although you did allude to ending up somewhere else if not careful.
He did say something like "you have to turn off it and rejoin it"
I’ve tried to imagine what the Auto Shenanigans videos would be like without the occasional line of cutting dry sarcasm. Then I realised I don’t want to imagine that. The horror.
At the Skærup Øst motorway service at E45 in Denmark, there is a complete Bronze age burial mound. That was not the original location, but the remains that was found during motorway construction was moved to the service area, and recreated in its original splendour. That's a bit more impressive than Roman remains :)
Yeah, but it had to mean moving the toilet!😁
@@ukp42😂
Richard Stilgoe from That's Life (BBC 1) played the piano on the bridge over J3 which stood as a bridge for several years. It was called Bridge Over Troubled Mortar and was broadcast around 1975.
What a great series. Thank you 😊
Great video as always thanks Jon 👍
Would really appreciate you going back to some of the first ever motorways in the series and covering them in the increased detail that has developed here. M1 again please!!
I remember being on the Concrete section from A10 onwards so loud in the 70's
Happy new year, Jon - thanks for the never-ending stream of stuff I didn't know I needed to know.
I’ve been on the M25 Motorway lots of times including when there has been accidents, broken down cars and congestion at junctions that gets very busy. And also I find that the A282 has Junctions 1a and 1b and no Junction 1.
And of course once you get to Junction 5 as you are coming down south from Dartford Crossing you have to choose which lane to use to continue on your journey on the M25 motorway or to carry on down south on the A21 to Tunbridge Wells. And it’s so confusing which can cause accidents.
What a great series, Thanks
I for one will be avidly following Jon’s next endeavour, where he potters about East Anglia’s moister areas in a cabin cruiser like Alan Partridge with the series, ‘Secrets of the Broads’.
Very nice video, has to be said!
Another great production Jon. Permission to use the term "Bull Shirtery" had me in stitches. Also the outro, those 2 cars passing, break timing was excellent...spot on production content.
Just love your dry sarcastic humor. Perfect!
Your videos always brighten my day, thanks!
Loving your work mate. Thank you!!!!
I loved in Cobham, went to school in Easy Horsley, so watched the stretch between J10 and J 9 being built for years.
I still think you should come to Germany and do secrets of the Autobahns. You will have it all ( former transit routes, East/West border crossings, etc.).
I still can’t figure why these videos are so interesting but anyway, keep up the good work, very interesting and love your sense of humour!
What do you mean "only motorway we've got left"? There's a whole island just to the to the west of Britain full of quirky motorways to explore
I hope in the next episode you mention about the light aeroplane that landed on the section near Thorpe Park just before it opened.
"The 'slight disagreement' between 1939 and 1945..."
Great use of litotes, there, Jon.
Also worthy of note: the term 'Bullshittery'. Not censored by the auto captions. I approve of that.
Very very interesting as always!!
Would you know the reason why it's still mostly concrete instead of tarmac from junction 11 to junction 8, they have resurfaced parts of it but still big swathes of concrete.
Also I live near to junction 14 of the m25, originally there was a railway line between junction 13 and 14 that is now a public footpath. Hope all is well, take care
definitely curious about this one, that section is close to misery on run flats and slightly too hard suspension. Whenever I’m stuck in traffic here, which let’s face it is most of the time, I’m always suprised by how deep and wide the drainage?/expansion?/misery? grooves are
Thank you John!
One of the better videos in the series, well done!
When the M25 has been dealt with, looking forward to "Secrets of the B Roads!"
Or Britain's highest roads would be a good one. Some stunning scenery and epic drone shots
Or how about signposted C roads. There's not very many of them.
Or the secret motorways
@@pigpenpete😂
Love this, regularly drive on all the sections covered, will re-watch so I can thrill passengers with M25 knowledge.
Nice to see your still up for a good time after the welcome break, pun intended. Really enjoy your video's, great content with some side tracks morrrrrre please.
The field on the North side, halfway along the runway at Wisley Airfield was transformed into a World War I no-man's-land, complete with trenches, muddy shell holes and charred trees, in 2010, for the filming of Steven Spielberg's "War Horse". An impressive set! A few weeks later, it was just a field again; how boring!
I may never get to the UK, but I am thankfulfor all of your videos. Stay awesome John (good name).
Well if you do ever get here at least you'll be able to know interesting facts about whatever stretch of motorway you'll inevitably be queued up on. 😁
Brilliant episode Jon
Great video and great knowledge jon
"The bullshittery that's going on around junction 10" is the best explanation that I've ever heard of what is happening there. Brilliant mate. 👍🏿👍🏿👍🏿
Thanks Jon have a good New year
Interesting from end to end 👍😀
Jon, you missed out a set of secret sliproads between J5 and Clacket Lane Services that gives access to Hogtrough Hill, although seemingly for emergency services only.
There’s another set of sliproads between J27 and J28, by Theydon Mount that I’ve absolutely seen be used by a non-emergency services vehicle. Seems that some locals may use it regularly.
Yes, I've gone up it when I was spreading some woodchip on the field there. I wonder if Jon will pick up on the field being earmarked as a site for a services that never happened, and is just abandoned now. Although I think I saw someone had some horses on there in the summer, probably fly-grazing.
Shshsh dont tell everyone they are there purely to allow the locals youth late night access to clackett lane mcdonalds
5:49 oh how wonderful...... you're "turn of phrase" brings such joy MANY MANY THANKS, and here to the New Year, again thank you.
Always a good giggle and smile here watching your vlogs.
Interesting and funny. Thanks Jon.
Nice one, Thanks for watching!
Another cracking video. I can’t help thinking, with it being one of the most famous ones, it could’ve spread out over several episodes…. but that’ll only make Jon work more. I’ve just discovered I’m in the credits list too… overwhelmed! 🎉