Basic HTML Version
10
City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
The M25. Is it all that interesting?
udits -
.
Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
On previous twenty-ninth days of October Cyrus
the Great entered the City of Babylon, Constantine
the Great entered the City of Rome, Sir Walter
Rayleigh lost his head and Joseph Goebbels was
born. Then on 29 October 1986 Mrs. Thatcher
opened the M25 orbital motorway. The inspired
plan by Simon Ashcroft of the Brighton & Hove Bus
& Coach Company to commemorate the silver
anniversary of the M25 with a guided tour last
October has really caught the public imagination
making it onto the television news and into most
of the daily newspapers. The tour sold out and
several more are planned for 2012.
I didn’t ever take much notice of the M25 as a
passenger but, as a relatively new driver, from
behind the wheel London’s orbital motorway feels
like a manic and panicky version of those conveyor
belts in sushi restaurants. It’s not sexy like Route
66. It isn’t associated with political sophistication
like “inside the beltway” and aside from the
blue-brick arches of the Chalfont Viaduct, built 100
years ago to carry the railway from High Wycombe
to London, it isn’t terribly pretty. As the author Iain
Sinclair wrote in his seminal 2003 work of
psycho-geography
London Orbital
the M25 is
"the dull silvertop that acts as a prophylactic
between driver and landscape". Crikey!
Recently I had a remarkable and rather depressing
conversation with the visitor services manager at
an English cathedral (which cathedral, out of
kindness pure and simple, shall remain
anonymous). We’d previously been allowed to
guide inside the cathedral but now the policy had
changed, an edict had been issued, and Cathedral
volunteers were henceforth to be the only ones
allowed to talk to groups inside the building. As a
guided tour company you can imagine this was a
bit of a brick wall for us. I was trying to persuade
the lady from visitor services that not only could
our Blue Badge guides do a really good job of
guiding in the Cathedral but that by using our own
guides we could guarantee to our customers that
the tour would always be entertaining. “Guided
tours are not meant to be entertaining” barked this
custodian of the nation’s heritage. And there ended
both the conversation and our visits to the
cathedral!
So. The M25. Is it all that interesting? If you are
tempted to go on a guided tour of London’s orbital
motorway is it a sign of a bright intellectual
curiosity or are you just a bit bored? Would not a
fresh copy of the Radio Times and a highlighter
pen provide a more entertaining afternoon?
Let’s take a look.