This Is The Road To Hell - Or Is It? The M25
Everyone in the UK has heard of the M25 Motorway and a vast majority of people have travelled on it at some time in their lives.
I have the pleasure (or misfortune) of travelling on it at least a couple of times a month to visit family in Kent. To make this journey from Tintern in Monmouthshire, where I am lucky to live, I take the M4 and then join the M25 at junction 15 near Heathrow Airport and continue anti-clockwise to junction 2 which is just before the Dartford Crossing. I join the M25 at Junction 15 which is all well and good, but you are actually joining it in lane three of six fast flowing lanes of traffic as shown in the photograph below.
Therefore, you take your life in your hands, say a quick prayer and hope you make it to the next junction let alone junction 2!
Nowadays, there are a lot of drivers on the roads who think they are the Lewis Hamiltons and Valentino Rossi’s of this world!
They think the speed limit and rules of the road don’t apply to them. They are normally the ones you see going so fast they don’t realise their junction is coming up and then cut across all lanes at a rate of knots without a care in the world, cutting everyone up in the process. Then we have those drivers who obviously have such bad eyesight they can’t quite read your rear number plate and need to get really close to see it, the middle and outside lane hoggers who think that as they are doing 70 miles per hour (or less in a lot of cases) it is ok to just sit in the lane without actually overtaking anything and then finally the drivers who think the hard shoulder is for taking a comfort break!
Phew, apologies, that’s enough of my moaning - if it wasn’t for the M25 I would have to drive across central London which in itself would be horrendous. Not only for the amount of traffic but also you now have to pay the Congestion charge (£15.00) plus the ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) charge of £12.50 if your car is not ULEZ compliant! Therefore, the M25 it has to be for me!
So, as I was sitting in stationary traffic at Junction 5 Godstone where they’re putting in more emergency refuge bays (they realised that having four/five lanes of motorway, or as they now call them ‘Smart Motorways’, without any was dangerous), I thought I’d find out a bit more about this big tarmac circle that I was sitting on.
Here are some interesting facts:
- The building of the motorway started in 1975.
- Margaret Thatcher opened the final section in 1986.
- The first breakdown occurred at 11:16am on October 29th,1986, just a few hours after Margaret Thatcher had declared it open.
- It is 117 miles long.
- It cost around £1 billion pounds to build.
- It isn’t technically a complete circle – the Dartford Crossing (a major crossing of the River Thames) is actually known as the A282.
- The Dartford Crossing is subject to a toll. The road is monitored by cameras with Automatic Number Plate Recognition and all traffic using the road between 06:00 and 22:00 is liable to pay the charge. There are no toll booths and the toll can only be paid on-line.
- There are 31 junctions in total.
- In 1998 Robbie Williams, Chris Evans, David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and the Lightning Seeds filmed scenes for the music video of the Euro 96’ Football anthem, Three Lions at South Mimms.
- There’s an M23 and M25 but no M24. This is because motorways were named after the nearest A road. The M25 is named after the A25 because at its oldest point (the section crossing Surrey) it follows the path of the older A25. The M23 is named after the A23, but even though there is an A24, no M24 has been built next to it.
- It goes through six counties – Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Essex and Kent.
- The constant traffic jams have inspired names such as “Britains biggest car park” and songs such as Chris Rea’s “The Road to Hell” which reached no. 10 in the charts.
- Two of the busiest junctions on the M25 are Junctions 13 and 14 which are on the Heathrow Airport side of the M25. Thousands of people work at Heathrow plus an average of 230,000 passengers travelling on 1300 flights per day!
- The route was subject to no fewer than 39 public inquiries lasting a total of more than 700 sitting days.
- and finally, more than 2.1 million trees and shrubs were planted over the 117 miles.
Since it opened in 1986 there have been constant improvements such as the installation of the Variable Speed limit to keep the traffic flowing as well as widening schemes. The use of variable speed limits makes this a "controlled motorway" and if hard shoulders are used at peak times it becomes known as a "managed motorway".
The cable-stayed Dartford Bridge Crossing was built which meant that both the original Dartford tunnels could now be used for the anticlockwise traffic.
In 1995 the 'Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signalling' (MIDAS) system was introduced from junction 10 to junction 15 at a cost of £13.5 million and it was then extended to junction 16 at a cost of £11.7 million in 2002. It is a distributed network of traffic and weather sensors, speed cameras and variable-speed signs that control traffic speeds with little human supervision. The system has improved traffic flow slightly and reduced the amount of start-stop driving, although from personal experience I’m not too sure about that!
The M25 is arguably one of the most important and busiest motorways in the UK. It was primarily built to save lorries and travellers heading through and across London to get to their destinations such as Airports and Seaports.
It was also not a new idea. As far back as 1905, a Mr William Rees Jeffreys told the Royal Commission on London Transport that “it was a disgrace that no road existed which encircled the English Capital”.
In 1985 the Department of Transport issued a publication on the M25 called “The M25 Orbital Motorway”.
In it, the Secretary of State for Transport at the time, Mr John Moore wrote the Foreword –
“The M25 London Orbital Motorway is the longest city bypass in the world – 117 miles of communications vital to Britain’s economy and to improving the quality of life in the capital and towns and villages previously clogged with traffic.
The achievements involved are vast. Remarkable feats of civil engineering are combined with a real concern for the environment and the overwhelming need to improve people’s daily life.
The M25 is more than an impressive road. It is a testimonial to British expertise, not just engineering but in successfully matching the demands of commerce and industry with those of leisure and local communities.
The road’s completion serves to remind the nation and the world that Great Britain is a leader in design, construction, innovation and environmental improvement."
The above words were written in 1985 and since then there have been and are still ongoing roadworks and improvements. Junction 10 at Wisley is one of the biggest projects ongoing at the moment. The National Highways website says they are restoring heathland and upgrading the junction with the A3 Wisley Interchange to reduce congestion, improve safety and create more reliable journeys, hoping to complete it in Spring 2026 and at a cost of £317 million.
The photographs below show how Junction 10 looks in February 2025
Researching this motorway for my article has proved interesting and, apart from getting the train, I do not have any alternative other than to use it. I appreciate that the traffic will not improve as the population is ever increasing and everyone it seems is having goods delivered by courier which doesn’t help either, so it is something I will be enduring for a few more years yet. I expect you’re probably thinking that I sound like Victor Meldrew from the TV comedy “One Foot in the Grave” (if some of you are old enough to remember him which I admit I do), but at least having driven round to Junction 2, I know that my family will have a glass of wine waiting for me.
Now that makes the M25 bearable. Cheers & happy driving.
With additional help from Roads.org.uk & Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Contributed by Lisa
(Published on 1st Apr 2025)
