Motoring Oddities EP2 - Where is Englands Largest Motorway Junction? Gravelly Hill Birmingham 

Fun Fact: All the narrowboat owners come and moor their boats under the junction as it provides great shelter from the weather to paint their boats.

'Gravel-lee' hill. 3:24 Nah, coming up from London? Turn left at Spaghetti Junction. Going to London?... Er... follow the road signs 😆 🤣 😂

Excellent video. I really like that you relate the historic costs of these projects in today's money, which saves me having to look it up !

Spaghetti Junction is also a 4 way railway junction, a 4 way canal junction plus the point where 2 of the 3 rivers flowing through Birmingham meet. I actually lead bike tours along the canal from central Birmingham to there.

Your comedic timing is spot on...You get a belly laugh each episode...

The canal under Spaghetti is crazy, especially when you think it was there long, long before any motorway ever was. Amazing!!

Lol something interesting in regards to the route of the expressway to know... is that it was a huge part of Aston that had survived the bombing which the council demolished. Birmingham city council, of that period, arguably did a lot more damage than the Luftwaffe across the city.

Lived in Birmingham area between 2001 and 2012, and used spaghetti junction a number of times. It's really not all that hard to navigate, as long as you read the signs while driving to the junction. I worked for a while at Junction 6 Industrial Estate, which is not very far away from the junction at all. Probably a bit more than a stone's throw, but close enough.

I don't go there often but when I do I've never had any problems navigating it. The signage is quite clear and easy to follow.

Just South West of Gravelly Hill Interchange, the A38(M) has a section that's a 7 lane tidal flow carriageway: during the morning rush, it's 4 lanes into Birmingham + 2 lanes out, during the daytime, it's 3 + 3, and in the evening rush it's 2 lanes in and 4 lanes out - each configuration maintains a lane's gap between each direction, and motorcyclists are prohibited from using the centre lane, as that's where the drain is. Then, on the inbound stretch, almost as soon as motorway restrictions end, you're hit with the madness of the central Birmingham section of the A38: 30 mph limits, a right hand elevated corner, roads joining and leaving, several tunnels (with corners!) before you suddenly find yourself at a giant traffic light controlled crossroads. Back to the M6, and the next junction along, J7 (Great Barr), is unusual in that two of the sliproads connect to the inside of the roundabout, for space-saving reasons (possibly due to the proximity of J8 - the M5 junction). At the opposite corner of Birmingham, with the M42 / M40 junction, there were (briefly!) two separate plans for a Strensham to Solihull Motorway, connecting to the M50 at the other end. In neighbouring Coventry, what is now the A444 Phoenix Way was originally planned as the Coventry North - South Motorway, which at its southern end would have carried on along the former railway line, across the allotments, and join up with the other bit of A444 joining onto the A46 from Warwick.

My dad was born in a house overlooking Gravelly Hill in 1933! If you look to up the row of houses on Minstead Road you can see one painted white from the M6. That was his. Also my uncle Doug designed and built Castle Vale Estate (he worked for the council). He recalls seeing Coventry burning during the Coventry Blitz. Also my uncle George worked at the power station where Star City is now. His pet dog drowned in the River Tame under the now M6!

When I'm on it I'm too busy not crashing to have a look around. Great video. 👍🏻

Birmingham is not that bad. At least it's not Coventry. 😅

Perhaps you could look at the original Spaghetti Junction - Worsley Braided Interchange - which for a short distance also happens to be the widest road in Europe at 18 lanes across.

Nice style of presenting. Very clear and cordial.

Well done ... you managed to make it sound rather exciting 😂 .. another great video ...

Started in 1968, completed in 1972? Does not compute in 2022. If such an undertaking were commenced today in July 2022, it would be initially scheduled to complete in 2032, revised several times over the duration to complete 2052 before the plan being scrapped altogether in 2051 have cost £99bajillion. Weirdly, through all that time there would be no signs of progress other than a single traffic cone on the hard shoulder of one of the roads that gets moved periodically. In 2053 several high ranking politicians and civil servants would take up executive directorships at various large construction companies - attending their obligatory single board meeting per year via video link from their spanking new luxury yachts. The spanking new yacht having been in the family for generations and originally registered in Eyam in 1665 of course :D

Absolutely brilliant.

Apparently because of the road junctions, canal and railway the junction was allocated its own specific nuclear bomb in the Soviet bombardment plans during the Cold War.

Concrete brutalist art, I love it. I drive on there a few times a couple of times a week, I’ve no problem finding my way around it, it’s just the traffic is horrendous 😂😂

Just imagine the chaos it will cause when structures like this need replacing..

I think that piece of the M6 has been resurfaced about 4 times in the last 30 year, I don't think I have ever travelled on it without there being some kind of road works going on. Fortunately I don't use as much anymore.

Sorry Jon but it is pronounced Gravel-Lee. If that's odd, Bradley Lane is pronounced Braid-Lee Lane

The Bromford viaduct needs no further video until they take all the f@*&kin% expansion joints out, thank you😊

Birmingham's "Spaghetti Junction" reminds me of Springfield, Virginia's "Mixing Bowl".

Used "Spaghetti Junction" loads of times but never ever thought about the magnificent design and engineering it would've taken to build it 🤷‍♂️

It's not grave/lee, it's gravel/lee hill👍

Apart from being a mental motorway junction, it is also a place where three canals and two rivers meet, as well as being a railway junction too.

Its an awesome achievement. I found it easy to navigate.

Gravelly hill junction is not nightmare if you concentrate on what you're doing and where you want to go, it's all clearly marked, just use your head

Hilarious and informative as always. If it's any use, according to the Bank of England, then £8m in 1968 is in todays terms £98,802,211 (oh and 4p..... but I haven't seen a penny for years, so lets just say £99m give or take a few quid)

Due to the junction opening at the same time as the common market, the digital road signage on the A38(M) was metricised thus displaying 100km/h rather than 60mph. Needless to say midlanders put their foot down and started doing 100mph instead.

1:17 genuinely concerned for the swan there

Thx for conversion

The gravely hill motorway interchange..the only location in the uk where all modes of transport are in one place Road..train..air corridor..train..canal..footway...motor vehicles.

Great video as always, driven it once many many years ago.

Another one that is similar to it is the Almondsbury M4/M5 junction north of Bristol.

Spaghetti junction. Boom, remember seeing an apple truck in its side with apples on lower carriageway. Called it apple crumble on spaghetti for life

Geez! That's changed a little! Used to live 5 mins walk from there.

fun fact : due to the volume of traffic Children growing up near Gravely Hill have lower IQs due to the higher level exhaust fumes a bit like those in Bridgewater had when British Cellophane was operating

I try and avoid Birmingham but I have been over this glorious chunk of concrete!

I believe "Spaghetti Junction" was mentioned in an episode of "Are You Being Served?"

I been on those bridges!

All the canals in the area make it an unusual road junction.

Jasper Carrott quote,”It’s proper name is the Midlands Motorway Link System,but everyone calls it Spaghetti Junction,because they made a right Bolognese of it!”

Motoring Oddities. Moddities.

There was no need for that FFS at the beginning. Anyway, you're not even properly in Birmingham there. That's Villa territory 😂

I can well imagine that Spaghetti junction is easily the most complicated and confusing road Interchanges in the UK. I wouldn't really envy West Midlands Traffic Police officers whose job it is to patrol the area as I can imagine them getting lost as well as your average motorist.😳😠🤯🤪 Mind you, I also bet it's saw plenty of criminal types come a cropper in its time.😜

1:14 is that swan acoustic?

Jon, I'd watch a video about paint drying if you wrote and read the script!

Just a little correction...Gravelly Hill is pronounced 'Gravel..y' sorry, keep up the good work

Say what you like about J6, you rarely get held up there. Only time I see traffic is when expressway traffic queues out onto the junction

Easy Junction, I use it a lot

was nice once

Driving in Birmingham is nightmare, not just spaghetti junction!

Can I put forward the A14 as an oddity? The junction numbers are the wrong way round because it was renamed from the A45 which as with any road that has a 4 starting it's number starts in the western region of England/Wales, roads starting with a 1 start in the Eastern region so Junction 60 of the A14 by Felixstowe Docks should be junction 1 but isn't

Captions: "Hello, and welcome to autism..." 😂

Having used junction 6 quite a lot, I know it is not a nightmare if you follow the signs to where you are going.

Mate those subtitles/captions at the start.. is that automatically generated?! haha

Built around the canals and rail which were kept almost fully operational during construction. Also it is a piece of piss to navigate!

How about the strange junction 8/9 on M4. The only double number junction in the UK

Not bad , but I think you sold it rather short. Maybe you could have mentioned the road the canal and railway junctions underneath it and the ancient cave dwellings that were destroyed when it was built. Your biggest sin however, was pronouncing it's name wrong - it's 'Gravel-eee Hill' as in a hill made of little stones, not 'Grave-lee Hill' which would suggest a hill sheltering a hole full of dead people.

I think the 2nd largest motorway junction is the m42/ m6 and m6 toll area

You seem to have missed Cadbury's being moved from Bournville, er to Poland.

8 million adjusted for inflation

Always thought Willy Wonka was the best

Have all the rent boys, smack heads etc etc been moved on? Or did I just pass through on the canal on a good day?

I'm an American and I'd take Cadbury's over Hershey's.

No luck catching them swans then?

600 views for this? I thought it was up in the millions

Fun fact it's not fun driving a bus around there it's bloody awful

It jars when you say GRAVEly hill . Isn't it gravelly hill?

Would have been nice if you had acknowledged the 2,200 plus people killed and the over 3,000 people injured in bombing raids.

also good to test suspension on your car and if you really want to fuck someones comfy ride, just drive on this stretch of motorway. fucking nightmare for suspension life.

Great video about an extremely ugly section of motorway. I hope we’ll see a “secrets of the M6” soon. It might take a while, it goes very far North…

It is now a major sh!thole though !

white flight

Making this stuff up as you go along? ...

Nice to see that Britain built a Texas-style freeway interchange.

Birmingham suffered a fate not unlike those of other industrial cities, a poor reputation

I once got a bit lost here twenty years ago.

"Gravely ill"??

Who in their right mind builds a motorway on concrete columns? This thing is going to need constant maintenance, they should have built it on a raised embankment.

Milka

This cost 8 million pounds, which in todays' money is 8 million pounds adjusted for inflation! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

If you get more popular or go viral, please dont lose your affable nature. Keep your style likeable and dont become all glossy and annoying. Love these videos. Also Hershey bars really do suck. So gritty. Why do people love them so much?

Gravelly not pronounced grave... more like gravel.

Birmingham looks so depressing.

this film is BOSTIN skip.

Just because you have not heard of Whittaker's chocolate is no excuse. Whittakers bumped Cadbury off the top of the perch years ago. And Cadbury showed no loyalty to its fans, the planet, ecology and taste when they polluted their recipe with palm oil. Not had Cadbury since, and we only see it when they put it in cheap specials in an attempt to lure customers back from Whittakers on price.