PDA Truckstops

Truck and Driver Truckstop database

England

Welcome to the Truckstop search facility for England. Finding what your looking for is very straightforward, simply use the links on the right to be re-directed to the area section of your choice. At each page you'll find full listings of the TruckStops, Cafes or Motorway Service Areas for that area. At the head of each listing there is a brief overview of where the information is stored and how the listings function. If you feel there is more we can do to improve this facility, please email the PDA using the email link at the right of this page.

The M1 Motorway - a legend

From Leeds to London, the M1 is 187 miles long. The first 72-mile stretch from Watford to Rugby was opened by then transport minister Ernest Marples on 2 November 1959. Thirteen-thousand cars went for a spin that day, but 100 reportedly broke down, unable to cope with the high speeds (there was no speed limit). The 70mph limit and the MoT certificate were introduced much later. There was also no central reservation, no crash barriers and no motorway lighting in those early days.
Today the average traffic flow is some 90,000 a day, with the heaviest section being between Junction 7 and Junction 10 (Hemel Hempstead and Luton) average flow in summer is heaviest, at around 150,000 a day.
Engineer Sir Owen Williams, who had made pioneering progress with reinforced concrete in the building of Wembley Stadium in the early 1920s, designed the original bridges. The road costs around £7m a year to maintain.

The M1's service stations have names which have become resonant of the English countryside. Alan Partridge has paid tribute, as has Morrissey, who sang "I left the north again, I travelled south again......I lost my bag in Newport Pagnell". One of Milton Keynes's boasts is that no part of it is more than half-an-hour away from the motorway. The name Watford Gap now symbolises where the south meets the rest of the country. Watford Gap services are more than 60 miles north of the Watford which most people have heard of. (They are however about one mile south of the village Watford, Northants).

The southern section of the M1 was completed in 19 months at a cost of £16.5 million. 20 million tonnes of earth, gravel, rock and chalk were excavated to make way for the M1. The 5,000 labour force who worked on the M1 were brought to work on double-decker buses. Canteens were needed every 2.5 miles along the motorway.
The cost of the whole motorway was £50 million (the cost today would be closer to £2 billion). It is monitored 24 hours a day by eight different police control centres. Today, many describe it as a car park, the problem being the huge increase of cars on Britain's roads from 2.8 million in 1959 to around 30 million today.