M3
October 29, 2008 on 8:53 am | In Thoughts | 9 CommentsProbably one of my favourite roads, despite it being an utter bastard to drive on at any time even vaguely defined under the umbrella of ‘rush hours’.*
Driving back from Heathrow this morning it was snowy** and the dull sky transformed itself through sunrise into a glorious vista. I’ve driven north on it in the early hours to witness an orange moon hanging just above the deserted horizon and it was so gorgeous I switched off my music to appreciate it in silence.*** Somehow, even though it is a great fat motorway carving a brutal swath through the British countryside, it still manages to be beautiful. I like beautiful things.
[/pretentious babble]
*The phrase ‘rush hour’ (singular) no longer being appropriate.
**Which, admittedly, would have been more relaxing if they’d thought to grit the damn thing in the 5 miles south of Basingstoke. Bloody ice rink.
***Just after which I got overtaken by police while doing 90mph, who not only didn’t stop me but seemingly failed to notice my presence on the road at all.
9 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Entries and comments feeds.
Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^
36 queries. 0.277 seconds.
Powered by WordPress with jd-nebula theme design by John Doe.
What were you doing at Heathrow? It is a nice road, though not as nice as the A-road that runs from Petersfield to Winchester (A272?) which is one of my favouritest things.
And, snow??? What the hell am I doing up north if I can’t even get a decent snowfall?
Comment by Jenny — October 29, 2008 #
I generally find motorways a bit dull, tbh. The best roads are twisty b-roads, out in the country. Good fun!
Comment by Dickie — October 29, 2008 #
The road going from Winchester over to Petersfield-ish was very pretty, I do recall, and the A34 just north of Winchester wasn’t bad either :-) Unfortunately the A272 is going to be forever etched in my memory as ‘that road from Midhurst to Petersfield which I shouldn’t have even been on, and then from which I promptly got lost again, all the time getting rather stressed’.
I think my favourite roads would have to be the A1095, and the A1120 (which I could have sworn were B-roads…). Lovely.
Comment by Lucy — October 29, 2008 #
A272 is nice, but a lot of the trees along it’s length are horse chestnuts and so have sadly died. It is a wonderful road though.
@Dickie: Generally I’d agree with you, but I find there is something strangely hypnotic about a deserted motorway. It lets you lose yourself in thought quite easily and yet you still cover vast tracts of distance.
@Lucy and Dickie: The worst A road I ever drove on was somewhere ‘near’ B’ham (on a drive to North Wales so not sure how near it actually was), don’t know if you know it – speed cameras what seemed like every 100m enforcing a 50mph speed limit on a perfectly straight road. For about 15 miles. Absolute torture.
Comment by Callan — October 29, 2008 #
Callan, there are quite a lot of roads ‘near B’ham’, not least with speed cameras…! So no, offhand, don’t know it!
Comment by Lucy — October 29, 2008 #
I like the M3. It leads to good places.
Comment by Anonymous — October 29, 2008 #
The above was me.
Comment by Claire — October 29, 2008 #
yeah it leads you to southampton and me and callan, what more could you want?!
Comment by Ben — October 30, 2008 #
@ Lucy: You’d remember it if you’d been on it, I think. I’ve never seen such a high concentration of speed cameras in my life, nor had such a frustrating drive!
Comment by Callan — October 30, 2008 #