Happy birthday M1 - and congratulations Mr Norris Gabardine

By Steve Orme on Nov 3, 09 04:16 PM

Look, to us 'oop north the M1 may be little more than an escape route from London and Watford simply a gap where our footballists can expect three easy points but both the motorway and the old Blue Boar services turned 50 this week.

Come with me as we drift back to the shining dawn of the space age that was l959. On second thoughts let's not.

I was there. Bottled Double Diamond, polio, faces long as a gas man's Mac, smog, impending nuclear obliteration. Ah yes, happy days.
I do remember poring over Boys Own comics lauding the opening of the M1, pictures of junctions like no junction ever seen before. Then over the page to read how those evil Russians launched Laika the dog into space with no intention of bringing her back. Bomb Moscow. Now!
In truth I suppose what is most striking about those pictures now is that at the time motorways really did seem to be the answer. It's just that the problem had yet to be invented.
Even at a sanguine 50mph, the gloriously empty multiple-lane carriageway meant speedy travel, with a stop for a 6d cup of tea and a fondant fancy at Watford.
Oh and how simple we were. Not an Armco barrier in sight. Not a single sign for Alton Towers or Billy Big Blooms garden centre. No overhead gantry helpfully pointing out that people who fall asleep at 80mph wake up in a queue for the afterlife. Or was it Westlife? Both the same, really.
Ooh and look, no tossers in vorsprung joy of motoring saloons making bottom love to the car in front.
Largely because there was unlikely to be a car in front.
Of course to a lad from my neck of the woods motorway travel was a bit passe. The M6, excitingly known then as the Preston by-pass, was opened in December l958, the month General de Gaulle became the first president of the fifth republic and I was given a model garage with a wind up lift for Christmas.
And therein lies the rub. Heralding the truth about the age of the motorway, 47 days later the M6 closed for repairs. Just as Mr Norris Gabardine of Bamber Bridge set out in a slate grey Austin A30 to visit relatives in Leyland . Such has been the history of the network since, we are delighted to announce that on the very day Watford gap services turned 50 he arrived a his sister's house.