Roads

[bellinghman]

I am amused by this BBC article on Britain's most intimidating road junctions.. Particularly this comment: Between them, Birmingham, London and Glasgow took eight of the top 10 spots.

Strangely enough, I had no difficulty in guessing what the other two junctions in the list were. Yes, the Swindon and Hemel magic roundabouts, at #4 and #9.

(As someone who negotiated the Hanger Lane gyratory (#5) twice a day for several years, I think I can cope with just about anything, though I'll concede that the Glasgow ones are a real pain.)

Comments

[feorag.livejournal.com]

The Glasgow ones are helped a lot by local knowledge, as it's mostly the signs that are useless. Junction 18 is particularly tricky as it is not only not signposted until you get to it, but splits off from the right-hand lane, leaving the unwary to get across three lanes of traffic in about 10 metres. It then takes you back over the motorway and along it for a bit till it meets Sauchiehall Street.

This is unfortunately the junction most convenient for the car park which is handiest for two of the better gig venues in Glasgow.

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

I still remember my first encounter with that junction – I wish I could forget it.

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

my first time in Swindon I ended up driving through the magic roundabout in the dark while there was a rain storm. I could barely see and it took quite a while after I arrived at my destination before I felt calm and stress free again!

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

I remember when they were making that roundabout. It was quite possible to drive through Swindon in the morning and the evening of the same day and find the road in entirely different configurations.

My father, a nervous driver at best, refused point-blank to tackle it and my brother or I always drove if we were going through Swindon.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

A story told is of a Armoured Car squadron arriving there not long after it had been built. It is said that the commander, more used to small roads of the Wiltshire plains than these new-fangled circle things, paused for a bit while he considered what to do. Then, having made his decision, he boldly led the squadron forward.

In a straight line.

Right across the middle.

Moral: he who has armour and weaponry, wins.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I did that at Hemel Hempstead.

Came off the motorway at the wrong junction and misread the sign in darkness and torrential rain that obscured the road markings; I went across three mini-roundabouts on the wrong side of the road before the oncoming headlights tipped me off about what I was doing wrong ...

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I can quite imagine that happening.

Happily for me, the first time I met it was on a nice sunny day when visiting bellinghwoman at her workplace. Since she was then working on Park Lane, which is the hill leading down to it, my initial requirement was just to do a 180 round that single element which was at the bottom of the hill. I worked up to more complicated variations on later encounters.

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

I think the only ones I've not tackled are Piccadilly and Kingston Bridge, Glasgow. I've survived the rest, though I vividly remember my one and only encounter with Hemel Hempstead.

'Oh, look', said my mother, whom I was chauffeuring on my first, very nerve-wracking drive into Greater London, 'someone's been playing around with the road signs'.

'That's not a joke, mum ...' says dutiful daughter, concentrating very hard on trying to fight her way through the road junction. 'Please be quiet, I need to get through this in one piece'.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure why Kingston Bridge doesn't count as one of the M8 junctions in Glasgow, myself. I certainly messed up trying to get to our hotel last time we were up there, and ended up crossing it.

For me, it's Piccadilly and Five Ways I've not driven through, though I might have been through the latter.

[artela.livejournal.com]

I thought that list was going to have things like "Snake Pass in the Snow", or "The Black Mountain Road in fog and ice", but no, it seemed to be a list of junctions half of which I regard as easy-peasy (what's wrong with the M5/M6 junction for instance? It's perfectly straightforward!)

[autopope.livejournal.com]

what's wrong with the M5/M6 junction for instance?

Nose-to-tail traffic with drivers changing across three to six lanes at average speeds of 70mph, that's what's wrong with it. That, and the layout is so non-standard for British motorways (cloverleafs are vanishingly rare on this side of the Atlantic -- we use roundabouts or gyratories instead) that everybody travelling through it gets confused. Oh, and there's the third motorway feeding in half a mile upstream to add to the amusement. If you're American, layer "Boston-style drivers" on top of that.

[artela.livejournal.com]

I've used it a few times - never had a problem (apart from the "everything crawling at 15 mph one junction either side of the interchange, but I guess that's bound to happen in "rush hour"...)

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Yup Snake Pass in the dark - much scarier than the M8!

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, the first time I went over Snake Pass, my future first mother-in-law was driving, going to Glossop to spend Xmas with that family for the very first time.

It was dark.

It was snowing sufficiently hard that shortly after we entered, they closed it to any more traffic.

And we were in a VW beetle.

(For extra fun, MiL-to-be actually had a prosthetic for one hand, but since she'd been coping with life with only one real hand since a child, that wasn't something we tended to note most of the time. She managed to raise both a set of triplets, and a son who managed to be president of the Oxford Union before reaching his current position with BBC Newsnight, so a pretty capable woman.)

If it hadn't been dark, I might have actually seen how scary that trip was, but at the time, we were so relieved at getting away from Derby, anything looked good.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

First time I drove from Embra to Sheff the satnav took me over Snake Pass. in te dark. At the end of a long day. With TWO HOWLING CATS PISSING IN THE BACK.
Not keen to repeat that..

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

How weird! Yeh I don't like the Kingston Bridge much but really it'snothing compared to half the Southamptn one ay system! or the roundabout I have to go through every day in Sheffield nr the uni!