Britain’s dimmed love affair with motorways

By 9pm on March 15th, atop a boring-looking bridge above the M25, a small crowd has gathered. Junction 11 is rarely a popular choice for a Friday night out. Indeed the M25 is rarely popular at all. The road—which encircles London and is Britain’s busiest—is also one of its most loathed. Chris Rea, a musician, wrote a song called “Road to Hell” about it; Terry Pratchett, an author, argued that its mere existence was evidence of Satan’s own. The news that it was—for the first time ever—going to close during the daytime so that a bridge could be demolished was received by many as just the sort of irritating thing that the M25 would do.