185. The Road to Hell

Just before Bell Weir Lock is the bridge that passes over the M25, commonly known at the Road to Hell. Listen to the song of the same title by Chris Rea and you’ll soon know why.

The M25 is a London Orbital Motorway and is one of Europe's busiest motorways. It   is about 100 miles in circumference and traffic moves at the grand speed of about 15 mph. And why does traffic move so slow? It is because, in their wisdom the government motorway planners in places the road is only six lanes in width causing constant bottle neck at junctions and in the case of accidents and breakdown, of which there are many, this makes the situation worse, hence this so called motorway is more like a large urban car park with the traffic going nowhere because for most of the time it is stationary.

The worst parts of the M25 are around Heathrow, the M1 and the Dartford Tunnel, and obviously the worst times for traffic are weekday mornings and Friday afternoons.

As we passed under the bridge, the Captain turned to the First Mate and asked “Do you think that gangsters really did  bury victims in those concrete support pillars?”.The First Mate replied” In the 1960’s and 1970’s there were lots of stories floating about how people ended up being buried in motorway bridges and the victims were generally supposed to be minor underworld figures who had been killed by and then conveniently disposed of by dumping them in the bridge concrete. Of course ,if it was true they’d never find bodies unless the police got permission to actually dismantled or more likely demolish the bridge in search of a possible body that belonged to a bit of human trash in the first place .Of course, it probably did happen but to prove it would be very difficult. However there was an interesting case concerning the Severn Bridge in the late sixties. Apparently one of the labourers fell into a bridge support form as the concrete was being poured and realizing that he couldn’t be saved, his fellow workers just turned a blind eye to the accident”.”Why did they do that?” asked the Cabin Boy. The First Mate replied “Well I suppose that it may have been a health and safety issue and they may have lost their jobs and even if the management had found out about it, they would have turned a blind eye just like the labourers did   about the incident, as they stood to lose huge amounts of money if the work had to be re-done.