Secrets of The Motorway - M65 

"It was supposed to...", is basically this channel's catchphrase ❤️

Missed a bit; Just before the M65 ends at Colne there's three bridges that pass over the canal; the motorway bridge, the old Colne Road bridge, and the New Colne Road bridge (142, 143 and 143a resectively on the L&L canal), under which are a section of Barrowford Locks in the canal for all the uppy-downy boaty stuff as cars do drivey over toppy stuff... (Source: Used to live in Colne and walked & cycled along there many, many times staring at it all)

What might be notable is that the M65 essentially follows the Leeds&Liverpool Canal - except for Blackburn where it was, as mentioned, rerouted around town :)

I can’t believe I’m obsessed with a motorway channel and I don’t even live in that country.

Growing up as a kid in Blackburn in the 70's I remember there being a large white cross painted in the road outside our house, It was used as a reference point for those doing the aerial photo surveys that were done when they were trying to work out what alignment the M65 would take through Blackburn. Our house was directly on the alignment shown at 4:38

Great video I remember the extension being built. There was a farm house between 1and 1a that the protestors used. I remember driving round to them all being in the road protesting wouldn't normally be an issue but my car had the orange beacon and motorway contractor on the back . At nelson the slip road construction meant the loss of Nelson Stock Car track real shame it was one of the best tracks in the North West

The section of road at the beginning of the video is the old alignment of the A49 Wigan Road. Just behind where the embankment is now was a farmhouse which was taken over by protesters. They painted the outside and there was a big police style badge on it with something like "Eco Police" written on it. One day, I was was driving past on my way home and there was just a big pile of rubble with an excavator parked on top of it. They also occupied the trees opposite for a time as well. Any hope of extending westwards is now over. Retail/residential/commercial development is planned for the land towards Stanifield Lane and, to the west of that, Lancashire County Cricket are going to build two new pitches and all the associated infrastructure.

The original idea of bulldozing half of blackburn would've been the better solution but M65 works fine as is

I grew up in the shadow of the M65, remember every section being built /opened over a 16 year period and obviously it was the first motorway I drove on, about an hour after passing my test in Aug 1983. There's another high level crossing of the M65 by the Leeds Liverpool canal too , between junctions 6 and 7. Incidentally very close to that other canal over bridge , is the exact half way point of the canal , same distance to it's start and finish in Leeds and Liverpool. Brilliant video , learnt stuff from there even a motorway saddo like me didn't know about our local motorway 👍

Been waiting on this episode since the series began, nice to see you in and around Burnley John, hope your stay wasn’t too depressing

Thank you for being a constant in a world that turned upside down this week. Really soothing to have your videos to watch. 🤗

Yorkshire and the 'Not Yorkshire' place next door settle their differences? Hmmmmm, never going to happen 😀 (Another great video by the way)

Everyday, in every way, your series just gets" betterer and betterer"! Love in Jon, thank you. The admin building for the power station looked pretty cool, I guess it'll get bulldozed though :/

I remember watching the Huncoat power station get demolished from my Grandma's house.. I'm born and bred in Hapton so the M65 runs right by my House, very interesting to hear of all the things along the way that I pass regularly and never noticed or thought anything of it 😊

Literally couldn’t really give a shit about the road network but this channel is sensational.

I love your unique presenting/narrating style. We need you on real TV!

I used to work along the M65 corridor & you’ve confirmed a large number of theories that I had 👍🏿

I used to pass under Junction 4 on the bus to school. You could have also added that in addition to the protests that went on over it's construction, the residents of Darwen also protested the initial naming of the services that was built there. They wanted to call it Blackburn Services but it wasn't even in Blackburn so we kicked off about it. They eventually compromised by naming it Blackburn with Darwen Services

I stayed in Preston in the early 90s, stopped in a hotel full of Pro snooker players, shared the lift with Cliff Thorburn and leaned up against the bar with Stephen Hendry who smoked like a chimney, great video as ever mate, you need to Drag Lewis on screen, he's probably more famous than Stephen Hendry these days.

Great video Jon 👍 The amount of times I've used these motorways, never a thought for the back stories! Excellent!

Interesting for me as I lived for a time next to J5 and I still use the M65 a lot. I think that at one of the junctions there is still a sign remaining from when the M65 was first built with a slightly different typeface to the modern signs.

Long ago, when I was chairman of the Yorkshire Dales NPA Planning Committee, circa 2000 we had a site visit to a quarry somewhere near Grassington. At those events you had to let the public make their five minute spiels. Well according to one member of the public this bloody great hole was not in fact a quarry but the end point of a mammoth hole which went back to Blackburn, or whereever and the intention of MI5, or was it MI6 was to have this long tunnel and extend the M65 through it, not just to Skipton, that was a piece of piss, but on to Grassington. MI5 / MI6 had lots of amazing technology to do this including flying bulldozers and revolutionary airships. I remember that as chairman I had to repremand the senior planner, who was taking the minutes at this public meeting because for some unaccountable reason he missed out the bits about the airships and the flying bulldozers. Of course when MI5 or MI6 come up you always miss them out of minutes. If this seems bizarre the stuff you learn about the police on public authorities makes what is going to be revealed in London this week seem believable.

Havimg a shitty week at work so a video on the secrets of the M65 os exactly what I needed. Thank you John.

Love the A Team machine gun sound effects.

Brilliant. Highlights many odd planning decision as usual. Thanks for an interesting video John. Cheers Bob

My hometown local motorway, been waiting for this one! So weird to see you be right by J4, my high school was nearby and I did my driving lessons around that junction too! I never knew about the roman road and the realignment of it though!

Somehow John you have made a series which on the face of it should be mind blowingly boring but its not! I'll bet you could make a series about watching different colours of paint drying entertaining 😁

Super sweet awsome vlog. X

Hey Jon, that odd slip road at junction 6 was suppose to be a direct link to the Whitebirk Retail Park, but guess what, it was never built You did leave out the bit that the M65 west of junction 4 Darwen is the steepest motorway in the UK. You also left out that the overbridge near junction 6 is a mini version of the impressive arch bridge on the M62. The Yorkshire end of the M65/M650 did actually get built, it's the A629 which is dual carriageway from Keighley down to Bradford, they are still arguing over where to build the M65 to A629 Truck Road, as the preferred route is over the old Colne to Skipton Railway line that is in the early stages of being reopened.

The amount of research that must go into these videos is frightening.

Staggering amount of research and infotainment Jon 😎

Hiya - @ 5:36 - you have got the same Camera Tripod as mee!!! 😉🚂🚂🚂

Just found this channel, great stuff! Very much looking forward to a M60 Bredbury Interchange episode.

Yesssss been waiting for this! Thanks for another brilliant video! ❤

Sorry i was a little late, super as always! Cheers.

9:40 NEVER!!!! 🌹🌹🌹

Great video, very informative.

Thanks

Been looking forward to this one! That jump scare got me though 😅

Believe you’re spot on with the ghost slip at Whitebirk, also 2nd aquaduct between junction 6 and 7, also for Leeds Liverpool canal

The newer parts of the M65 are just a glorified dual carriageway and as it's quite hilly, it's a pain in the backside for traffic which gets caught behind HGVs.

I think a fried of mine was one of the tree people trying to stop motorway progress. Made the pages of the Independent thanks to some off-colour commentary about the wholesomeness of the policemen’s mothers

that extra bit of sliproad at M65 J6 looks an awful lot like the start of the flyover for the J6 going into Blackburn. It was either there before they extended the M65 west, or it almost looks like they thought, we already built the junction to take a flyover, we might as well add the ground work for the flyover just incase we run the M65 south of Blackburn, as well as building some type of dual carriage way into Blackburn?? That's my best guess

I do like this style, Great for a weekend.

awesome video

Interesting video as usual but why were you nowhere near the M65 in the closing shot? Enjoyed the brass band music by the way.

3:20 the beginning of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" has a lot more context now... :D

Excellent as usual and loving these outro's

brilliant

The actual reason the Yorkshire councils didn't want the M65 to come East through their areas, Horse & Carts were still in common use in Yorkshire. And Some Buses still ran on steam..

Shows how young you are, John - d stood for (old) pence! £sd - pronounced LSD - was what was used in pre-decimal days - pounds, shillings and pence, it signified - lira, soldi and denarii - not lounds and dennies or dence! Twelve pence = one shilling!

pmsl at the thought of the protestors being asked nicely,then the outcome lol

Interesting sign on one of the houses at 3:35: "Hampshire Constabulary investing in protest". What's that about?

Still amazed that just about everywhere else in the world manages to get things done but its nigh on impossible to get people to agree ....even if theres a rationale....in this country. They're quite happy to knock stuff down though ...or let it fall down....and leave various bits of tarmac and concrete. Presumably for future historians to ponder over.

1d is one penny (back then 1/240th of £1).

Yep a road im familiar with. dont blame you for wanting to leave preston. staying there for long periods of time is likely to cause depression. always though the m65 was odd. another unfinished road in the north, it is a trend.

1D is pronounced "one penny", the D stands for Denarius (Denarii is plural), a Roman coin 2nd century BC.

Bloody flippin' Jon, you rattle these videos out so quick my ADHD doesn't have chance to kick in! Probably not a bad thing to be honest, as you were!

My my blue star , sometime ago… 😂😂

Hello Jon, how the devil are you, have you had a good week?

Superb as always, cmon Peter Dibble channel, after the gob smacking Modulex video (Architects Lego by Lego) get back to good old American Freeway stuff (at Peter Dibble channel) John, keep up the fantastic work.

Awesome video

Hope your back end got out intact from Crown Point John, (Outro of video). Lots of shifty types lurking around up there!

Roads smell a lot. Ironically, the squatters did as well.

John another tongue twisting explanation of this politically is it on or off Motorway. As you pointed out the original concept was to improve access up the Colne valley to various mill towns' up to Nelson going into decline to the main motorway network i.e. the M6 at Preston. Also via the enhanced A56 and M66 links to Manchester. As with other Motorways it was built in piecemeal stages with lots of planning enquiries along the way. The biggest issue was which route to take around Blackburn who's MP was the Late Barbara Castle one time Minister for Transport. As you correctly surmised the southern route was taken providing an odd kink in the road as you drive south and by time of it's completion little of the industry it was to support remained.

Would love to know what the old plastics factory was called. I work at the building, built where the plastics factory used to be and I'm convinced it's haunted! Any ideas on the name of the old plastics factory?

Why no junc 7?? Living here I travel up and down this motorway daily.

When is the Lancashire v Yorkshire rivalry going to end? Never! (I do think it is all a bit tongue in cheek now though)

I’m not sure if motorways are really built to bring prosperity and easier access to underdeveloped areas, or if it’s just to help people get away quicker!

Whoa....... where the feck was junction 7????????

Yes

My god, Britain's weather is so dreary.

The 70s oil crisis is the antagonist of this channel

Sorry John but I'm not quite sure why you've used the Yorkshire tag unless it's to wind up idiots like me 😅

5:44 Well I s*** myself, so thanks for that!

8:33 The A and W are backwards.

Sorry I'm confused. Why didn't they just number the New junction as J1 and the existing J1 as J1a,? Or would that have been too simple?

Another brilliant video! The toll looks like it was for the use of the bridge. After all who wants their Ass washed away in a fast flowing river??

Don't want to seem like a boring old phart, but the thing which would allow your ass to pass the tollhouse was a 'Penny', not a 'd'. Don't ask me why they used that symbol for them but there must be some logic in it! Thanks for you never-ending excitement about such things we take for granted!

Just spitballing, but from your previous videos, a slip road is sometimes put in for a service station. So perhaps that's another logical possibility?

On the m65 never made it to skipton

03:47 A666? Highway of the beast / Highway to hell? Or Manchester...

“Cone” the “L” is silent!

Another superb video Jon. There are so many odd road decisions in this country it’s never ending.

This may be the Mandela effect kicking in after about 30 years. However.... I think I remember the stub of slip road on the exit at junction 6 being used for contraflow traffic when the original eastbound entrance was being re-modelled and the new section joined to the old. I think it's the remains of a temporary entry slip road that linked the eastbound entry from Whitebirk roundabout to the original section of the motorway. The new bridge had traffic in both directions for a time until the eastbound entry was re-opened in its current alignment.

I remember them building the M65 as a kid. The motorway used to end at traffic lights at Junction 13 where Reedyford Hospital sat in woodland. The hospital was flattened and woodland chopped down to build junction 13 and extend the motorway through to Colne. All the bridges from junction 6 at Blackburn to Preston are built wide enough to accomodate 3 lanes.

Imagine that - a power station right next to a coal mine - how neat and reliable. No wonder they closed them.

Yes! You have uncovered Burnley’s two bridges to nowhere! Indeed the one you were standing on was Barracks Road which used to meet up with Gannow Top in the decimated Whittlefield area and the other was a direct connection from Padiham Road to the barracks called Cavalry Street. The area was blighted for years before the Department of Transport approved the route. The public inquiry into the “Calder Valley Motorway” took place during 1973/74.

You always know its going to be a riveting next 10 or 20 minutes when you hear "How the devil are you? Have you had a good week?". Cheers John, wicked sweet awesome.

I used to travel the Burnley-Blackburn stretch of the M65 on a weekly basis as a schoolkid between 1995 and 1997, it was always fascinating to see the progression of the expansion work at the Blackburn end.

Just what I needed a decent video to watch, am stuck in hospital after finding out land rovers don't like canals like my boat does was an informative bit of info I guess. Lucky a policeman was on hand to dive in and save me, it was cold and dark at the time.

You are desperately avoiding the M60 aren't you? Presumably because you don't want to explain the Bredbury Interchange

I think it would have been economically better to extend the M66 to the M65 than to extend the M65 to Bamber Bridge, as useful as I find the link from the A6 to the M6 and M61.

I'm really enjoying your videos up towards my neck of the woods. These are roads I use all of the time and as much as I liked your videos about the pointless southern and midlands motorways it's great to see you venture into the proper part of the country where the motorway first started its life haha

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I’ve always thought the M65 was a crazy motorway, for years it started in the middle of nowhere and then stopped absolutely in the middle of nowhere. IThe start makes a bit more sense now with connections to the M6 and M61, but the end is quite bizarre. As you say, like the M62 except it got cancelled

John, I think you need to go on a rollercoaster... maybe something off Thorpark on the M3... we need to... re-asses your use of "Exciting" :P

Nice to see the video actually starts filming in Burnley when you say Preston, then end the video in Burnley at the hospital ruins up crown point, I will forgive you for this discrepancy's. Nice touch popping down to Barrowford though, you did miss a massive pop culture fact though, the power station admin buildings where used to film an episode of Red Drawf, and it was also referred to as Padiham B Power station.

The whole interchange between the M6 / M61 / M65 is confusing for anyone, and you are right the M65 is one of those motorways that is neither here nor there.enjoyed the video though, cheers.

Oi! Don't blame us Lancastrians for not getting the M65 finished! We did our bit, hence the run out to Colne in the first place! It's them Yorkshire buggers who were being difficult. Just like they were with the M67!