What is the most famous highway in the UK?

The M25 or London Orbital Motorway is a major road encircling most of Greater London. The 117-mile (188-kilometre) motorway is one of the most important roads in the UK and one of the busiest. Margaret Thatcher opened the final section in 1986, making the M25 the longest ring road in Europe upon opening.



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Hanger Lane Gyratory – West London. Magic Roundabout – Swindon. Gravelly Hill Interchange (Spaghetti Junction) – Birmingham.

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Britain's first motorway, the Preston by-pass, opened in 1958. Designed by Lancashire County Council under civil engineer Sir James Drake – regarded as the pioneer of the UK motorway network – it's now part of the M6. The next 10 years saw UK's network expand as hundreds of miles of motorway were built.

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Hardknott Pass is considered to be one of the most challenging in the UK. It has earned this consideration due to its series of hairpin bends and the high risk of ice on the road. It is a steep, twisting, single-track road that cuts right through the heart of the Lake District between the Duddon Valley and Eskdale.

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How the M25 got its name. The same principle explains the M25, which at its oldest point (the section crossing Surrey) follows the path of the older A25. These roads are all in the South East, which forms Zone 2 of the country's motorway system. This explains why they all contain 2 somewhere in their name.

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Magic Roundabout, Swindon The Magic Roundabout is often listed as one of the most intimidating junctions in the UK. It's best shown in map form so you can see the complexity of its one-way systems feeding five roundabouts.

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The A836 passes through some of the loneliest and most sparsely populated parts of Britain, and despite having an 'A' classification, is a single track road in many places.

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By spring, the road surface can have holes (called 'potholes') where the surface has broken. Another cause is heavy lorries driving on roads not built for such large vehicles. They gradually damage the surface and can even make the road lumpy. Potholes aren't just bad for your car, they can also be dangerous.

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The M96, positioned 20 miles from the M5 and the M50, has remained a well-hidden secret for years that saves countless lives. The 400-metre-long stretch of road in Moreton-in-Marsh has seen more crashes and traffic incidents than major routes because of its special purpose of training blue light workers.

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Our widest motorway has 17 lanes of traffic The M61 at Linnyshaw Moss, Greater Manchester, has a whopping 17 lanes of traffic (plus eight full-width hard shoulders) running side by side. Admittedly, they are spread across several parallel carriageways – but they do all form part of the same motorway.

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No Motorway
  • Cornwall.
  • Dorset.
  • Norfolk.
  • Rutland.
  • Suffolk.


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In later years, as the M1 was extended southwards into London and the M25 was built, the M10's original purpose eroded. It was sometimes suggested that the motorway might have been extended to meet the M25 at junction 22, but this was never proposed.

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