Motoring Oddities EP3 - How Long Is The UK's 3rd Longest Tunnel - Hindhead Surrey 

Having lived in Portsmouth all my life and for the past 22 years worked for a company in Kingston upon Thames, I have travelled the A3 for more miles than I wish to think about. The 5 years of roadworks before the tunnel opened were a NIGHTMARE. It might not be the longest tunnel in the UK but it is the best 😍

It wasn't just the people of Hindhead who benefited from the tunnel. There were huge benefits for the half-million plus in Portsmouth and its hinterland and the Hampshire/Sussex border. The delays through Hindhead were often half an hour or more before the tunnel. It wasn't just the single-carriageway road round the Devils Punchbowl; the traffic lights at the crossroads with the busy A287 in Hindhead itself were the main culprit. It's ironic that the A3 went almost over the top of the hills rather than lower-level routes along valleys; that dated all the way back to the coach road from horse days.

It should be noted that the MP for South West Surrey at the time was Virginia Bottomley who was married to Transport Minister Sir Peter Bottomley. Probably helped with planning.

I do taxiing round the area, for 21 years now, and believe me, what a godsend that tunnel is, those lights at Hindhead used to be horrendous, tis a nice area though tbh 👍

I worked for Balfour Beatty on this project as a QS in the tunnel excavation team. Really cool project!

Nothing to do with Karens in Hindhead. There were two possible routes. The yellow route ran over National Trust land and they had, and used, their veto. The red route ran through Thursley and they have money and lawyers. But yes, it's been a real success.

I remember the jams approaching Hindhead when heading south. I had a trick to avoid them. Just after the dual carriageway ended, it was possible to turn off the main road and use unmade byways to sneak to near the head of the queue and come back onto the main road just opposite the carpark and tea shop :) Achievable with care on a dry day in a family car, any time and any weather in my 4x4

Coming back from Portsmouth in 2010 used to be a nightmare when you got Hindhead with the delays but the route around the punchbowl was outstanding.

My uncle lives right near the Hindhead Tunnel! (In Haslemere) He moved there around the same time the tunnel was nearing completion! I visited him a few weeks ago from Scotland, and we cycled up to the Devils Punchbowl, and saw the old A3 curving round it! It was great!

As regular traveler of this road for about 35 years this tunnel was a god send. *With 1 exception* They decided the block off the original road and allow it to return to nature in the middle of the wildlife reserve. This sound great until you get a problem with the tunnel, and on the several occasions when they have had to close the tunnel due to an emergency you are left with no way of getting past. The only possible route is via the tiny country lanes and these instantly become gridlocked. Leaving you screwed. A great removal of a bottle neck yes, but they have put all the eggs in one basket.

The interesting thing about the Hindhead tunnel is that there were plans to fix the Hindhead bottleneck for about 40 years previous to the tunnel opening. But nothing was ever done about it because of cost. They finally got their arses in gear and got it finished in 2011. Just one year before..........THE 2012 OLYMPICS. Strange coincidence that.

Great commentary and interesting details, thanks Bob

Loved the outtakes at the end. Keep up the good work mate.

Hello !! Thanks for another upload. I drove along the old road just a few weeks before the tunnel was opened. I made sure to savour the journey and enjoy the traffic lights.

The walk through on May 14th 2011 took about 15 - 20 minutes and was very interesting , loads of folk took this once only , never to be repeated offer ( the local bus company did good business ! ! ) .... a great day out ! ! ..........

I lived near by to Hindhead just over the border in Hampshire and my school bus had to go up the A3 towards Hindhead everyday and what should of taken 20 mins would take an hour and a half to get back home. on the north side as you are heading towards the tunnel on the left you will see an old turn off and large open land, that is where the workers lived during the construction of the tunnel in caravans

The difference that the tunnel made on the A3 in terms of speed is amazing. I don’t think there was ever a time that I didn’t have to queue through hindhead prior to the tunnel being built.

Thanks for the video - I am looking forward to the TV series. Really good. Love the sarcasm.

I have only once driven through this tunnel, en route from Mitcham to Havant, and have to say I was very intrigued to look up the history of said Tunnel. Brought brilliantly to life as always by A/S

Love your channel and enjoy all your videos. If you're still looking for motoring oddities, have you driven along Electric Brae in Ayrshire? it's the weirdest road which gives you the impression you're driving uphill when you're actually going downhill. Point your car uphill. take the handbrake off and you start rolling forward. Bizarre! Google it for exact locatiion.

Ahhh thundering through Hindhead at 2am after gigging in Southampton or Portsmouth on a weekend night, also dealing with the bottleneck at 6:30-7pm getting to said gig, never fun, but the single carridgeway was nice to chuck the car into going northbounds... I left the area just as the first hedges and such were being cut in 05, markings out on the ground... it kinda looks strange now.

Love the videos joined last week keep them coming do wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Loved your "little work gathering"

The ~50 meter elevation difference being called a "rather difficult terrain" was kinda hilarious. :D

I used to work near Hindhead in 1978 and vaguely remember using the old A3 to get there.

30k subs keep the great vids mate here in scotland at thr moment.

I remember going through hindhead as a young-un. This upgrade was sorely needed.

This is brilliant. It's not long at all compared to some other places though. I liked the end credits song btw.

Technically the 4th longest road tunnel - as the Kingway/New/Wallasey Mersey tunnel is twin bore, so counts as separate tunnels. Queensway/Old/Birkenhead - was the longest in the world at the time of opening (1934) - a title it held for 14 years. This is the tunnel featured in Harry Potter when they're escaping on Hagreds flying bike, and in Fast & Furious 6.

Nice one, information without any judgements ;) :D

We have tunnels here, there and everywhere here in Japan. I live on the Boso peninsula (Chiba Prefecture) and have an apartment in Tokyo. To get there, I have to use the Tokyo Aqualine. This is a half bridge-half tunnel over and under the busy Tokyo Bay. The bridge section is on the Chiba Prefectural side starting at Kisarazu and then descends beneath the sea at a manmade island come motorway services called 'Umihotaru'. From there we have an 8km (5mile) tunnel coming out at Kawasaki City, Ukishima-junction to go straight back into another tunnel that goes under a river, to come out to then go under two more tunnels at Haneda Airport (one actually goes underneath the runway) before finally having a respite. If I were to carry on towards northern Tokyo and beyond, I would very quickly enter the second longest road tunnel in the world that is the Yamate Tunnel (18.2km/11.3miles) and interweaves between several underground railway lines. When you use these long tunnels regularly, damn they get boring...seriously.

I did wonder where that road around the Devil's Punchbowl had gone as I remember seeing it when I went to Portsmouth years ago, it was quite a road, now only a distant memory.

A much needed upgrade it makes life bearable if you’re doing that commute, and those average speed cameras at the beginning / end of the tunnel doesn’t mean you have to drive at 50mph in the outside lane (unless stated) - it’s still 70mph!

I’ve been through that tunnel after it was built. Makes it lot easier to travel down from London to Portsmouth than it used to take ages with all the twists and turns. That the A3 used to be before the tunnel was built and there has been lots of accidents. Now it’s just straight forward. Wish that Highways England would sort out Ham Barn roundabout and to replace the roundabout. With a new junction and a roundabout built on top of the A3 with slip roads and the B3006 also to be improved.

Well I used ti live in Petersfield until I was 21 , we (my friends and I) would often drive to hindhead, Guildford or London for a coffee and had to navigate the massive bend around "The Devils Punchbowl", just before Hindhead and although at night back in the day (early 1970's ) there was a lot less traffic, duing the day the hold-ups were terrible. What ever happened to the "Little Chef" road stops.!!!!

Another great video, got to marvel at the engineering and ways round to stop Hindhead being a bottleneck.

As an amusing aside, having got their tunnel, the locals were all up in arms when hoards of performance car owners and loudly exhausted boy racers descended from all over the south east to blast back and forth making a hell of a racket, the tunnel being the perfect shape and length to massively amplify the noise of their brmm-brmmms 😂💥

Amazing how these things get built in the South near expensive places but in the North they just shove a duel carriage way through no matter what or leave the congestion as it is.

Wish they'd put a tunnel through the previously lovely down at Winchester M3, instead of a gash.

Hindhead is the Longest Land Tunnel in the UK. The Mersey Tunnels are Longer and Classed as Cross River.

A video dripping with sarcasm (more than usual). Excellent.

Surrey seems to be the hardest word

I don't get why they abandoned the old road. It could have been a nice backup for case of accidents or other tunel closures, mainly serving for emergency response teams...

Brilliant, sarcasm setting to 11!

Very interesting video again, I really enjoy these. So, why do they bore tunnels with bends in them? You would think they would mark the two ends on a map and then take a ruler and draw a straight line between them. A two-wheeler friend of mine once said it was to prevent him really winding up his bike and enjoying the cacophony reverberating from the tunnel walls. Surely there must be a better reason, after all a tunnel with bends is longer than a straight tunnel.......

To be fair was a much needed upgrade. I'm quite sure there was a level crossing in Hindhead where it bottle necked. Could be wrong. But yeah this route was a nightmare.

I'm a snaaaaaake, imma sneeeeeeaky snake

Not sure I fully understood the size comments...But great video anyway 😀

Myself, my wife and daughter did the walk of the Northbound tunnel before it opened to traffic

Funny how they could find the money to put a tunnel here (with the excuse it was for better transport links for the Olympics), but they couldn’t do it for Twyford Down at Winchester - a massive mistake

That's the third longest road tunnel in the UK, not the third longest tunnel as the title claims. Even just in the transport sector, there are many dozens, and probably more than 100 longer railway and canal tunnels.

Great vid 😎👍 You could do a video on the Winchester rd to nowhere. It was the junction of Hockley the only place in the country that the motorway had traffic lights 🚦

Byways around there are lovely in a Landie

It grates me that many places in the south east get a tunnel (Hindhead, Brighton, Folkestone, even blooming Baldock, and so on). I live at the foot of the Cotswolds escarpment and National Highways are proposing to gouge a deep cutting through the escarpment to re-route the A417 when even a short cut/cover tunnel near the top would massively help preserve the stunning scenery of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a centuries-old pub and also help wildlife. One rule for them, another for the rest of us out in the regions. Not enough Karens round here.

small work gathering

The A303 could do with a couple of tunnels, the one everyone knows about at stonehenge, but another, far more impressive one under the black downs from Ilminster to Honiton would be cool, it would be 12 miles long, so not as long as that Norwegian one. Never understood our aversion to tunnels tbh.

I live in Hindhead and confirm, it is indeed a tunnel

Came here to comment about the Queensway Tunnel, but then read the description. Hi there 🙂

cool

So will the same thing happen at stonehenge

I feel compelled to acknowledge your ‘Nambian Dollars’ comment 😋

Auto Focus Shenanigans.

Weird it goes straight under peoples houses

You're telling me they called the tunnel Hindhead and not Mindhead

What about Dartford crossing that's a long tunnel to

They should’ve done this with the M62 instead of going over the Pennines!

The tunnel took 40 minutes of my (then) commute to work

Aberdeen certainly used to be the most expensive place in the UK outside of London, don't know if it still is or not. It ain't cheap, I can tell you that 🤬

Karen most certainly can afford a better solisiter than me!

Not so much Karen, more Margot Leadbeater in this area. There are a lot of snobs in this area. However a cutting would've probably destroyed these hills even more than the Twyford Down M3 one (which has a memorial to what was the hill near the footbridge). I like your videos: short and to-the-point (it's almost as if you plan them!)

Hindhead managed to get what Banwell in Somerset has fought for for decades all because of money. There's a B road that goes through Banwell with single file traffic between cottages that's usually congested with lorries, all because they won't put in a bypass. Oh how money talks.

What the hell are those horrible yellow bushes that seemed to be the in thing to plant at the side of new roadworks in the noughties?

So two more episodes to come then, UK's 2nd longest tunnel and UK's 1st longest tunnel ?

Who's the gormless looking twonk 1:31?

I think sandbanks is dearer

They should have just churned up the countryside and saved the tunnel money.

There are railway tunnels in Britain much longer.

The Best thing they ever did , but a problem if closed and the route around is murder .🤔👍

What's with the split second flash of a guy wearing a green t-shirt & what looks like a silly snake hat!!

Yeah, I know the area well. I've worked there a few times. It's where all the left-leaning women live that are over-friendly towards me a mixed raced man but wouldn't live 50 miles from an area with my type around lol. It's a strange place while working as electricians in their homes and business they always bring up diversity " sigh " but looking at their friends, work colleagues, neighbours etc it's hardly that. Reminds me of that film ' get out '. No wonder they have a long tunnel to separate them from us

The presenter really does not need to swear.

Shame they don’t do the same thing with the M25.

I'm amazed that "Karen" -- which originated with African-Americans in the U.S. -- has now floated all the way to Great Britain.

Mersey tunnels are longer

The road was there long before all those Karen’s moved in, so when they complain about congestion and save the long eared beetle I personally would build the road as close as possible to their houses

Excuse me Jon, the contractors did not elect to build a tunnel - the road planners did! Please give them some credit? Thank you and I'll shut up now

Spent Manu a year waiting at the Devil's Punchbowl to get around that section of road. Surprised you missed the name of that one. A comment on the video, you need to fix the focus on your camera. The focus hunting is really annoying and distracts from the video.

The tunnel was the only viable option, it had nothing to do with favour or 'Karens'. The road dissected a SSSI and an area of outstanding beauty, duelling it wouldn't have been viable. Hindhead village is still a dump btw! I live up the road, and I'm in no way wealthy or privileged. It's hard living in an area where there is so much wealth and prices are high.

We need less roads Less cars. And less people

What is a Nambian Dollar ? if you want to be smart, learn what you're talking about, it's NAMIBIAN from Namibia, that's in Africa and why do you wear a woolly hat on sunny days ?

It's a shame you had to include swearing in your video. That limits the use.

You state that the route was the result of what the developers decided, making it sound like they turn up with bulldozers and decide where to dig. This is ridiculous - the tunnel would have been dug to match agreed plans, as per all the other comments about the controversy over the route, and your juvenile comments about 'Karens'. Please try to stay a bit more credible.

I have no real reason to visit Surrey, so it's not really a part of the UK that I have any wish to go to. Bland and boring.

What a load of crap

"At 1.4 miles long its the longest tunnel we've got in Blighty" - Sorry to be THAT guy. But the 2 Mersey tunnels claim to be longer. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensway_tunnel