this channel is the roadway version of jago hazzard

Did you know… The runway at Duxford was actually longer, however having the M11 built and cutting off the end of it, it means that the B52 Stratofortress on display there will never be able to take off because the runway is now too short…? Now you do!

3:27 And there it is, just visible on the left carriageway, the world's most important road sign. It helpfully informs you that the left-hand lane is for the M11, the middle lane is for the M11 and the right-hand lane is for the M11. I simply can't imagine what chaos would ensue if that weren't there.

Fun facts about the M11 from someone who grew up and used it as a commuting route for too many years of his life: the gap southbound on the m11 from Duxford at 10 to Stansted at 8 is the second longest motorway junction without an official off ramp its 19 miles, you can travel the whole length of the m11 via back roads without leaving any further than 1.5 miles as the crow flies, cambridge to Stansted you can narrow it down to nearly half a mile! The foundations for junctions 11-14 were made up entirely from crushed up concrete from nearby former RAF base now known as Bassingbourn barracks additional sub base material from RAF Duxford now Duxford air museums former 1830m runway was shortened to about 1500m the first concorde prototype g-axdn which after just 6 years and about 270 odd flights was gifted to the newly formed imperial war museum at Duxford aerodrome. The 330m of concrete made up the foundations of junction 10 to 9. If joining the m11 from.the a120 heading from Chelmsford/ Thaxted is is easily possible to accidently join the m11 instead of taking the incredibly complex off the a120 down to the roundabout up the slip road round the Birchanger green roundabout and off the slip road and on to the m11 norrhbound....... easy in theory til you actually drive it without sat nav! Despite being 53 miles long it only intersects with 4 railway lines Brighton to Cambridge Thames link line, Liverpool Street to Cambridge commuter line, the Stansted express spur, and the chigwell loop of the Central line, there is a secret exit on to the b1038 northbound and entranceway southbound! The m11 was meant to go all the way north and join with the a1 but at the time the a45 was a North to South East mish mash route of various sections of dual carriageway now known as the a14, despite being built only 10 years after closing there was no scope for the Oxford to Cambridge railway to ever be reopened the m11 went straight through the old track and trackbed with no infrastructure or access for the route.

A bit of trivia is when the Humber Bridge was built the intention was for the M11 to continue up and cross the bridge then head across to link up with the A1 near York, however that section was never built

The M11 offends me. It runs past Harlow. My mother used to take me to visit my relatives in Harlow. I’ve never got over it.

5:35 The Girton Interchange is easily spotted from the air, due to the two circles, so is often used as a navigation point when setting off in a light aircraft from Cambridge Airport. To pilots it is known as the Dog’s Bollocks, due to this shape.

The ghost sliproad at the Girton interchange was substantially worse than that. The now removed part was for Westbound A14 traffic to stay on the A14, which you had to merge across if you wanted to get from the M11 to the Eastbound A14. The Avenue had a tiny junction on the A14, as did many other villages further North, which now have bridges to the A1307.

Another fact for you. With there being no Junction 9 exit Southbound, it means that the M11 has the second longest distance on the UK network without an exit between Junc. 10 and 8 (when heading towards Stansted Airport from Duxford). At busy times it can take as long as 22 minutes to travel that section (I have timed it on several boring commutes) and there have been cases of electric cars travelling south running out of energy as underestimate how far it is to the Junc. 8 Birchanger services to get a charge. Ditto people running out of petrol or diesel for the same reason.

The M11 was originally going to go to the west of Harlow, so Harlow built loads of industrial estates over that side. Then it was changed to run to the east of Harlow.. consequently all the lorries from the M11 have to travel through the town. Really poor planning.

You missed a fun fact at J10 next to Duxford airfield/museum, they had to land the Concorde on full runway and then shortened runway to build the M11. If they ever tried to fly the Concorde out again (unlikely of course) , the runways now too short.

love the use of Gran Turismo 4 music, top tier soundtrack

I learned to drive round the Girton interchange and thank god they've improved because it was so dangerous before

Congratulations on 10k subscribers - I don't think I've ever seen a channel grow so fast in a few weeks! Keep up the good work (insert thumbs up emoji here)

Fascinating! I went to West Hatch school from 1970-77 and we watched the M11 being built at the bottom of the playing fields and did cross country running over the earthworks and up Luxborough Lane. One nasty incident happened at the controlled crossing near Roding Lane - two women were killed when one of the huge earthmovers ran over them. I can’t imagine how busy the old A11 would be now if it had never been built.

There aren’t any official exits between Stansted and Duxford, some 16 miles so if there’s a major motionless jam you are screwed. I have used the “works exit only” secret slip roads to get off and onto the local village roads and find my way home several times over the years.

Heading south, once you come past Duxford (J10) it's a hell of a long way before you can turn off again onto the A120 at Stansted (J8). I've got stuck twice after accidents in that stretch of road, and because it's only two lane all the way, there's no way of clearing the queues for many hours until the incident is completely cleared up.

Something I find interesting is that the original route of the M11 was meant to go north of Harlow apparently that’s why it’s industrial units are to the north of Harlow and not to the east. A little something from my home town for you.

The M11 is quite simply one of the motorways that exists.

These are excellent, again for any enthusiasts and Auto Shenanigans, have a look at Peter Dibble channel on what's left of the Old Portland Freeway in the USA and the ghost junctions, removal of an integral motorway/freeway and the style its done in. These are superb and I have a feeling the viewer counts by next year will be in the millions as various channel viewers cross over and see these works. Looking forward to the next one. The M11/M25 Whirlpool Intersection is a must video to do.

Brit expat now living in Canada. Here and in the US intersections are numbered by km or mile. It makes way more sense. Kinda like when we learned programming in BASIC… if you need to insert a new instruction or new intersection you have the numbering to do it. Also numbering by km helps you know exactly when your exit is coming up.

Other than the motorway services series, I’ve not watched any of the other series but I think this is the most interesting series so far on this channel.

A friend of mine used to live in Loughton and travelling from North Essex, a lack of north-facing slip roads at J5 was something of an inconvenience. I had the choice of going down to that A406 and coming back up on the A104, leaving at J6 then taking the M25 to J26 and coming back up the A121, a pretty drive through Epping Forest or leaving a J7 and travelling through Epping. I suspect the real reason they weren't built is to stop people rat-running the queues where the M11 goes down to 2 lanes. Some time in the 2000s they improved the access form the A406 (N) to 2 lanes to merge with the access from the A406 (S) 2+1 = 3. Why can't they do the same going south? Better still a free-flow link with the A12 (S) avoiding the Redbridge roundabout and vice-versa under the flyover over nothing.

I didn’t imagine the motorways would have such fascinating stories and artefacts from their development. Excellent presenter too.

The chigwell services site- I had occasion to use it when delivering to Olympic Park. The idea was to book in there & await your slot to enter the site giving you 20 minutes (haha!) to reach site after a bomb search by dog, swab & officer. What puzzles me though is why they ripped it up after the games. Many drivers travel long distances to reach East London & chigwell would've made the ideal rest stop before committing to enter London where you've a cat in hells chance to find a rest place. Why didn't they lease it out, or provide it for safety sake? Seems a total waste of money to rip it up, & a waste of opportunity.

The reasoning behind junction 5 still made sense when I was growing up in Debden in the 90s. Debden started out as a giant council estate to house London residents whose houses were destroyed by bombing during WW2. I remember almost everyone seemed to be originally from Londo, with elderly people (or their parents) moving post WW2 and younger people moving for cheaper Essex house prices, as my parents did in the mid 80s (both coming from North London). So when so many people are Londoners with family still in London, it makes sense that most people would only need to go into London.

As a New Zealander living in the UK in the 1990s, I remember missing that junction where the M11 splits and becomes the A11, probably because it was dark and multiple lorries were in the left hand lane. It was long before google maps, so it took me a while to realise I had overshot.

as being a local man to Cambridge i cant stress enough those improvements was a god send, that spot where all three roads meet, every day would be stand still at peak times for ages!

Thanks for adding the map for us non-UK viewers, who would have no idea where these dual carriageways are located around Britain.

That motorway had gone off my radar until this turned up on my feed! I spent a lot of time on the M11 commuting to Harlow, then on vehicle recovery, then trunking down to Park Royal. It used to bore me bloody senseless! My dad told me about the hurry to get the Duxford stretch done as Prince Charles was due to open it. My dad went down the job picking up people in a knackered old Ford Thames van and it caught fire under a bridge! Everyone got out but the van got pushed off the job and was buried in the verge. There’s apparently quite a few broken commercials and plant that got buried in a hurry to get the job finished along the way.

The abandoned slip road at J14 was very useful. When the A14 (which is effectively the continuation of the M11 northbound) queued back onto the motorway you could use the slip road to run parallel to the queue and rejoin about three quarters of a mile ahead. Incidentally surely the ex A14 through Huntingdon is good for an abandoned road video.

At Loughton no northbound junction IS because of the London Mint being there as you showed. So the armed escorts to the armoured trucks going to deliver money could get to London. At the service area there is a police station which is mainly there because the Mint is just up the road. So if somebody tried to hijack the trucks the police could be there fast. And now of course a handy base for police interceptors as shown in the TV series. There was a lorry park near that junction and Tesco once offered to put a store there (early 2000's) and to sweeten the deal to the local council , Tesco offered to pay for a northbound junction but this was turned down because of the mint being there. On that site there is a car dealer now. I also worked on the 2012 Olympic site right there the summer of 2012. I still have photos of it. It was the main security site. All vehicles going to the games at Stratford had to go through this security site first to be checked and scanned. It had to be put back as it was partly as people with big money live just behind the site (Alan sugar being one) .

Thank you John, my local Motorway. You missed out Jctn7 as do Every sign on Motorway, the'll tell you how long to Jctn 6, 8 etc but never 7. Up at Stumps cross shed loads (I mean literally) of portacabins were bulldozed into ground when motorway finished. HMRC were standing by to ensure nothing was removed from site. apparently cost of building a motorway means nothing of value can be re-used. You also did not mention only two lanes from J8 Northbound, like the world ends at Bishops Stortford.

Back in the early 90's there was a misleading road sign on the southbound M11 at the site of the Woodford Interchange. It said LH lane for the A12 and RH lane for the North Circular A406. The trouble was that it only led to the westbound A406. As a result, living in Neasden (NW London) back in the days before satnav, I had conversations that went something like this: Driver: Is this the right way for Docklands? Me: Er - no. Driver: Which way is it? Me: Well, think of London like a clock face. Docklands is at 3 o'clock. Driver: And where am I now? Me: Half past ten. You came in on the M11, didn't you?

This is great stuff! Feels a little like the content of Geoff Marshall, Paul and Rebecca Whitewick, maybe a bit of Martin Zero, but with an automotive spin. Love it, subscribed!

When the M11 was proposed, plans showed that my school would lose some of its rugby and cricket field by the River Roding. One of my friends had notice that his home was to be demolished to make way for flyover support. The motorway would have gone through Wanstead, destroying most of the old green, Wanstead Park, and even taken away some of Wanstead Flats. An opposition protest group, MOG, (Motorway Opposition Group) was formed and many meetings held. I think the cost of building from the original starting point probably proved far too expensive in the end. Now the M11 seems to follow the River Roding after crossing the M25. My family moved to the West Country in 1970.

I like this reminds me of the Secrets of the Underground series by Londonist.

“No desire to go North” sounds about right! 🤣

The first time I used the M11 was just after it opened and probably used it at least once a year since. Never really thought about it much, thanks for enlightenment.

Far more interesting than our boring motorways in NZ. Your videos are like modern archeological expeditions.

Am i the only one who noticed that at the end of the video where he is talking about the abandonment sliproad, the menu music of grand turismo 4 is playing, such a nostalgia

Well thank you very much for the explanation about the never built service station. I have passed that many times, living just north of the area and always wondered what those slips led to. I once checked it on google maps and became even more baffled. The building there is cut off from the surrounding community and just seemed like a lot of work for access to it.

I'm new to this channel and I have to say it's great 👍, I'm a highways worker and know some of these sneaky, hidden quirks but never the history behind. Great stuff. Subscribed and binge watching your videos

Thoroughly enjoy the history of these roads and seeing those ghost roads/exits to nowhere.

For several years the M11 northbound ended at the Bishops Stortford A120 junction with all traffic having to leave on the slip road. The section between the A120 and Cambridge opened a few years later and the disused concrete runways from RAF Stradishall in Suffolk were used to supply the sub base for some of this section.

Thanks for your videos John , I’m 65 later this year and love motorways, as a child mum and dad took me on holiday to the south of England, the M6 and M5 are my favourites. Thanks again , keep them coming..

Amazing how much content you squeeze into 7mins... happy to have double that!

The M60 and M67 would be good ones to cover! M60 at bredbury joins on the right going anticlockwise, and the m67 was originally proposed to meet the m1 however plans were abandoned but there's still evidence of the ghost slips and ski ramps

We used to drive down The Avenue from Madingley to join the A14 at a T-junction. It was somewhat hair-raising to join a fast-moving dual carriageway from a standing start.

You missed a couple of secret slip roads between J8&9 and also I could tell you a whole lot about that pesky J14. It used to be that Northbound and Eastbound traffic joined Westbound traffic at the same point which is that ghost slip. They had to cross paths and it was very dangerous.

The A14/M11 saw huge, significant improvements to the point that I actually enjoy driving between Birmingham and Chelmsford in Essex. It used to be an awful, awful route!

Ok with Chigwell, it may not have been profitable as an MSA, but why not a continental style parking area? They're just car parks with a toilet. Parking provision in the southeast is pretty tight and I'm sure it would get good use.

Use to pull from de la rue to DHS in Newcastle with armed escort. Apparently there is no on ramp London bound to stop any criminals escaping into London. It was said the police would have a better chance to stop them on motorway than in city.

I had the misfortune of having to use the M11 regularly after it opened, the surface noise and uneven joints between the concrete pads were bloody awful. My boss actually fell asleep at the wheel from the drone of the surface on one trip and ended up going through crash barriers at 70mph, taking out a motorway sign finally pancaking the car in a field, luckily he was not hurt.

Another great and informative video as always mate.

Should do a video about the A23 from London to Brigton. Which has changed paths along its way due to Gatwick Airport being build over old road. The building of the M23. Ect.

Really enjoy your videos John. Thanks for sharing and keep em coming.

I recently watched an old interview from the late 70s with Sir Frederick Gibberd (Harlow's Master Planner) where he says Harlow was planned and built with its industrial areas on the Western and Northern sides of the town to provide easy motorway access for lorries and commercial vehicles. The M11 plans then changed and it was eventually built to the south eastern side of the town. This meant the arterial roads of Harlow have been chockablock with lorries crossing the town day in, day out ever since.

I personally like when roads joining in and exiting the highway are completely separated, it gives you usually very seamless transitions, and I literally never ended up stuck with traffic on them.

Another great video, I used this rd for 23 yrs every day. Nice to see a bit of history about it. Love the sonic tune at ths end.

Great content ,,there was a plan to extend the M11 upto the North East (The East Coast Motorway) going via the under used Humber Bridge... It would be a nice little interesting video to make..

Hell yeah algorithm. Happy to have found you before 100k! Love to be taught about things that seem super boring but actually are kinda neat.

In the mid-1990s, the junction northbound from the A460 [North Circular] was artificially restricted to one lane; mega jams at peak times [just about all day] Eventually, good sense prevailed.

For many years there were no services at all on the M11 despite the planned in provision, and large signs beside the northbound carriageway warning drivers of this. There is now one, at Birchanger Green, the junction for Stanstead, which opened in 1996. Despite its deficiencies I'm quite fond of the M11, for some years it was my way home from London so the approach to the Wanstead interchange, whether from the A12 or the North Circular was always a 'Phew, out of the Smoke' moment.

I have no idea why, but I find this sort of thing fascinating. Subscribed!

loving this new series, can't wait till you get to the m5 in my neck of the woods, although the shortest episode will be when you come to do the m49 - with its single junction that still isn't connected to anything!

4:49 keeping safe distance, hell yeah!

Loving the inclusion of the GT4 music.

Great to see this channel blow up in numbers couldn't believe it took so long tbh Xx

I remember them building that new junction on the M11. Never seemed to make much progress on it for years, then it was suddenly done the next time I had reason to use the M11.

Could you do an episode on the M57/M58 and switch island where they both terminate, rich in pointless history of abandoned roads, not built roads, budget cuts, motorways that where never finished and so on, would make for a very interesting episode

Very interesting i have subscribed for more of your videos and to watch through the older stuff .

Another great video. I found myself heading up toward that secret junction between 8 & 9 recently and was very surprised to find the M11 at the end when all I was doing was looking for somewhere to turn around!

The sonic music at the end! Brill.. Also thanks for these vids. Quite interesting as I must have walked around some of these under areas at some point when I was young and never really thought about them. Cheers.

Not sure I'd use the word "exciting" but interesting none the less.

Love the drone footage,gives great perspective of what your explaining!

Ah yes, ,,,,,the unmarked motorway entry near Newport. I lived down the road from there, & used to sneak on to the M11 there if heading North, rather than driving down to the junction at Bishops Stortford. ......until the day I popped out on the motorway & found a police car behind me telling me to pull over.

Why did I find this sooo enjoyable to watch! Super job.

Very interesting, glad I found you! Thank you!

Fun game to play: Take a shot of a drink every time he says "junction".

Hi John great video. What about looking at the M3 by Winchester. I think the old A31 used to be the main road through before the motorway was extended. The bit by St Catherine’s Hill was discussed. I’m sure you know the details. 👍🏻

There were rumours in the David Cameron / Gideon days that there was a plan to extend the M11 to Hull. I'm guessing that this would carve all the way through West Lincs from Peterborough as (mostly) upgraded A15 to the junction with the M180 and then onto the Humber Bridge which would presumably stay as an A road. It's a nice idea, but I can see that there would be a lot of pressure from East Lincolnshire residents to upgrade their roads to join up with the new M11 sections. In the "Net Zero" world we live in today, I can't see it happening at all, unless there are serious plans to build a shitload of conurbations in Lincs to deal with the housing crisis.

@5:15 I thought someone had parked the Millennium Falcon 😂

Yes I live in South Woodford and you have covered it well there is a bit of the motorway in Hackney left over.

I haven't played Sonic 2 in ages that track of Chemical Plant 6:46 gave me memorie as a youngster. lol.

Blimey John, the Subscriber count has gone through the roof. Well deserved mate.

Loving the content 👌 up and down the country for work all the time and never knew about most of these things . If you ever in Kent there is a random road called North dane way that randomly comes to a right turn as they never finished it

Fact packed video again. 👍 You have cracked it and can see you're way on your way, congratulations on spreading faster than the latest strain, in a nice way 🥳

This is a very interesting series! Didn't realise there were many secrets along the motorways! The M11 is interesting to me as - living and working fairly close by - end up driving up and down it a lot! It was also nice to see the new junction 7a included, as the company I work for supplied the concrete to build the junction most notably the bridge - spent many days down on site testing whilst the junction was being built!

Hastongwood weighbridge is the old A11 road, until recently the old streetlamps were still there and operational...

Cracking as always sir...but hey at the end ...what an athlete 😉

Another great show!!!!

You ought to cover the shenanigans of the Winchester bypass, and further west the sheer genius of the m27 terminal at ringwood.

Worst thing for me about the old Girton interchange was that going north the traffic leaving the M11 left at a point after the traffic joining actually joined so the off ramp being after the on ramp caused traffic to queue and lots of collisions. Now however it’s the dogs b*llocks or at least it is as a navigation marker for light aircraft! It looks like it’s nickname from the air.

your channel is my current obsession with transport history..welcome to the inside of my brain.

Unless already mentioned, to the Southwest of junction 12 is the Arcminute Microkelvin Interferometer (trying saying that after a few pints) which is a twin array radio telescope system dedicated to mapping of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

I've spent many hours on the M11 and I can safely say I hate it. Two lanes means one accident and it's closed, which happens regularly, forcing traffic onto the A1 which is also two lanes for a large stretch towards London between Stevenage and Welwyn. Also when travelling East on the A428 there's no direct access to M11 south meaning you have to use the Maddingly Road which is also a bottleneck for traffic entering Cambridge, same when heading north.

Very informative and entertaining which aren't 2 words I was expecting to use when I clicked the thumbnail. In fact I thought maybe by 2 minutes in it would be the end of the road for the Channel and me but instead I am subscribing

The M62 in Liverpool starts at Junct 4 (The Rocket) presumably because they intended to penetrate further into the city at some time.. The M56 has no Junct 13 possibly because of superstition as there is no obvious place where it might have been useful. Glasgow's M8 slip roads leading to and from West St are separated by high level motorway sections which just stop in midair, the look as if the are designed as "ski jump" take off ramps for Harrier jump jets. John Lomas

Very cool. The old Girton interchange was clunky, and a bit of an accident hotspot due to the junction being laid out in a way that interwove two motorways in a very short distance. Very glad to see it gone, in all honesty. Interesting series, you've got yourself another subscriber.