A 50mph limit on an empty motorway is hardly a 'smart' move

THE roads were eerily empty when I plodded over the Pennines last Friday night.

Perhaps the four-minute warning had been issued and – totally oblivious, given the radio on my Peugeot 306 doesn’t work – I was about to be wiped out in a Russian nuclear missile strike. Maybe there was a particularly riveting repeat of I’m A Celebrity keeping everyone off the roads. Either way, on a Friday night commute which cris-crosses eight counties over 200 miles the traffic jams I normally encounter were nowhere to be seen.

So you’d think I’d have storming progress, then? Erm, no. Even though the roads were so sparsely populated I was overtaking a lorry every other ten minutes, there were still long stretches where I couldn’t go one measly mile an over 50. The culprit, the average speed limit preceding the new ‘smart’ motorway sections, is one of my real pet hates of motoring.

I love the idea; rather than have every Audi or BMW fly into the fog at 75mph and wreaking havoc on your morning commute, someone flicks a switch and lowers the limit to 50mph in an instant, massively reducing the odds of a pile-up. The powers-that-be spent ages calling them ‘managed motorways’ – largely because they always managed to make you do less than 70mph, but nowadays the idea is they’re ‘smart’ because they’re brimming with technology to make life safer.

All of which would be great apart from the one thing even the greatest gizmos can’t control – the highly evolved monkeys controlling the machines.

Why, when the limit is 50mph and clever cameras control all three lanes, is there still a prat in an Audi A5 doing 70mph (who, incidentally, never seems to get flashed)? Why do the lorry drivers, who seem to be on autopilot at 55-60mph, do everything in their power to get past?  It’s not just the motorists either – why, at stupid ‘o’ clock in the morning on an empty motorway with nobody working, is the speed limit still switched to the lowest possible setting? All that does is encourage drivers to switch off and listen to The Archers. 

Last month the Department for Transport announced the M62 and the M53 will be smartened up in their entirety, and chances are once they’re finished they’ll have a crack at the other ones too. While I’m all for clever roads that can alter their speed limit according to the conditions, I’m genuinely dreading having to spend years on end crawling along empty motorways while they’re doing the work.

Saving lives with adjustable speed limits? That’s a clever idea. Forcing motorists to spend years doing 50mph along an empty motorway because everyone in a position to change it back to 70mph has turned in for the night?

That’s not very ‘smart’ at all.

Motorway service stations are still worth missing out

Suppose you’re on your way back from a classic car show and feeling a tad peckish. Where are you going to stop?

It’s one of the questions I'm forever wondering when I'm out and about, cruising the highways and byways of Britain in all manner of classics in the quest to find a spot of decent en-route grub. The irony is that the usual place we end up stopping – motorway service stations – are largely locked in the 1970s.

Like multi-storey car parks designed for Austin 1100 owners, quaint farm entrances on the A1 and Little Chef restaurants, they’re a bit of Britain’s motoring empire which haven’t really caught up with the 21st century yet. If you happen to be shooting through the more scenic bits of the M6 in Cumbria you’re in luck – Westmorland Services, thanks to a combination of the nearby Lakeland scenery and its insistence on farm fresh local produce, is a joy to visit – but almost all of the rest are a not-especially-appealing exploration of fast food takeaways and overpriced fry-ups.

Of the alternatives, I’ve always had a soft spot for Little Chef, but the firm’s will-it-won’t-it skirt around potential demise makes us wonder whether we can count on an Olympic Breakfast in years to come. We’re also quite keen on the Route 66 vibe of OK Diner, frequented by A1-bound Elvis lovers, but we’d only make it an occasional joy unless we really wanted to emulate the Memphis rocker in his Vegas years.

Yet these aside – and the option of the shady butty van in a layby for the risk-takers among our resident food fanatics – stopping on journeys for a bite is almost always a succession of depressing service station eateries. That’s why one of the latest books to land at the Classic Car Weekly offices – Near The Motorways, by Hugh Cantlie, proved a bit of a hit with our hacks. Fed up with a succession of KFC Boneless Banquets, two-hour parking restrictions and toilets which all too often resemble that scene out of Trainspotting, it gave us hope that we might actually find a culinary delight to truly satisfy our post-show cravings.

The irony is that during the pre-motorway era of your mum and dad actually driving around A35s, Anglias and Minors the chances of getting a meal you’d enjoy – rather than ramming down your throat in under five minutes – were actually better.

Where do you stop for a bite to eat on your classic car journeys? I’d love to know whether you’re as keen as we are to give motorway service stations a miss

Motorway pubs could prove the saviour of a Lancashire motoring landmark

SHERLOCK Holmes might have called it a two pipe problem. For me, a clash between two of my favourite things – real cars and real ale – is a two pint problem.

Until very recently I could enjoy both, but knowing the clear boundary between them. Most of my motoring life, particularly on still, summer evenings like the ones we’ve been having lately, involved a classic car of some sort, a quiet pub in the West Lancashire countryside and a refreshing, but legal, shandy. Similarly, if I wanted to be happy in the haze of a drunken hour, Merseyrail’s finest and a plethora of town centre pubs were my oyster.

That’s why new plans by JD Wetherspoon to start opening pubs at motorway service stations didn’t leave me angry or overjoyed. The idea, like a hangover, hurts my head slightly. On the one hand you can take the view of an old mate of mine who argued vociferously that allowing any pub, anywhere, to have a car park is encouraging driving while smashed.

Motorway service stations are essentially big car parks, albeit ones with overpriced coffee shops attached. What’s more, unlike even the quietest of country pubs they cannot be reached by public transport (National Express coaches don’t count).

The Daily Mail reader in me, therefore, thinks motorway service stations are a menace that’ll fuel a drink-driving epidemic. But then I remembered all those visits to Forton Services on the M6, gazed at the Gerry Anderson-esque architecture of the old restaurant tower and wondered which idiot it was who decided Britain’s motorists would no longer benefit from it. It’s a wonderful bit of Sixties architecture – and, on account of it being a listed building, it seems the powers that be agree with me – and I always feel slightly sad when I see it lingering above the Lancashire countryside, unloved and unused.

The idea of it being a family-friendly pub/restaurant job, albeit one festooned with signs warning the designated drivers not to fill up on John Smiths as well as unleaded, appeals more than seeing it not being used at all.

Last year, I put it to JD Wetherspoon that if they’re serious about opening a pub in Ormskirk, they should name it The Harold Wilson (and if they do, you heard it here first). Now I’m going to stick my neck out and suggest that if they’re going to throw caution to the wind and start opening pubs on the motorway, they might as well bring a Lancastrian landmark familiar to drivers across the North West back to life.

Well, the idea made sense at the pub anyway.