First of all, please forgive this 'not very well travelled' southerner for my lack of knowledge about the north of England:O.

I live near the M1, and have always thought of it as the main route from London to Birmingham (and vice-versa), but just now, out of interest, I followed it on the atlas and found that it goes past Birmingham and on to distant destinations (to me).

Near the end, it has some serious (and unusual) bends, and it seems to join to the A1. It looks like it may be possible to reach Edinburgh if you keep going too - correct?

So, please, anyone who has gone beyond Birmingham, what is the road like? Does it look different - and what can you see on either side? What is the surface like? Is the traffic heavy or lighter than the London to Birmingham stretch? And what happens at the very very end?

Any info appreciated - it looks really interesting on the map and my interest is piqued.

Cheers, Ian

You're joking right? Please tell me you're joking?

It's a motorway. It doesn't go to Birmingham. The M6 starts near Rugby though.

The M1/A1 link is both brilliant (it joins two of our most important roads) and bloody awful (the surface is the nastiest, noisiest and in heavy rain the most dangerous road surface I've ever had the misfortune of travelling on). The alternative is the M18 to A1, it's slower and more twisty.

The A1 to Edinburgh is a nightmare - once past Newcastle it becomes narrow, dark and dangerous (and riddled with speed cameras). I believe the Jedburgh route is a better drive (not done it myself), or even crossing the Pennines at Scotch Corner and taking the M6/74/8 route is likely to be quicker.

"It doesn't go to Birmingham. The M6 starts near Rugby though"

Sorry:O - I know about the M6 Birmingham turnoff - just forgot to add that part (bit tired).

I have been up to Birminham many times, but I have only been further (up to Yorkshire) once, when I was at school, so I admit that I don't know as much as I should.

I live near the M1, and have always thought of it as the main route from London to Birmingham.............so, please, anyone who has gone beyond Birmingham, what happens at the very very end?

M1 doesn't go within 50 miles of Birmingham.

As for what lies north of Birmingham, it's hard to say.

Only a handful of intrepid explorers, no doubt inspired by books written by those brave explorers Thesiger, Newby and Burton, have travelled that far and unfortunately they never returned.

So be warned. Stay in the comfort and luxury of your southern home, and don't be tempted by the great unknown.

There are rumours of three-headed monsters with the strength of ten men and the capacity to drink 10 pints of Guinness every day, living in encampments which are twinned with villages in the Amazonian rain forests, speaking a dialect which is other-worldly, (and that is just the women) is only the beginning.

Things get much worse when you approach Scotland.

"There are rumours of three-headed monsters with the strength of ten men and the capacity to drink 10 pints of Guinness every day, living in encampments which are twinned with villages in the Amazonian rain forests, speaking a dialect which is other-worldly, (and that is just the women) is only the beginning."

Much more interesting than the south then;).

It's true - once past Daventry the signs should really say 'here be dragons'

Please tell me this isn't a joke because I will love you forever if you're being serious.

It's alright. A bit tarmacky.

It's true - once past Daventry the signs should really say 'here be dragons'

Thats about the same time the surface turns to cobbles isnt it?

once you get past birmingham you have to park up and get on the horse n cart. watch out for carts that have got stuck in the mud, lane 1 being quite bad for the ruts. passport and different items for bartering are essential and electrical items wont work as they still on coal(electric and gas to be rolled out in 2020). it can be drafty and no fuel shortage for your horse as they have plenty of hay....

omg i cannot believe someone has actually started this thread.

all those tv programs set in the dark ages and/or with filthy pesants are filmed in the north without any need for sets or a need to supply the extras with any clothes

Also up north the film Deliverance is considered a documentary.

Liverpool is still set in the 80's style wise.

In Bradford, Life on mars was seen as a gritty modern drama.

Don't go up north if you value your hubcaps.

Stay this side of the Watford Gap (which isn't anywhere near Watford).

So, please, anyone who has gone beyond Birmingham, what is the road like? Does it look different - and what can you see on either side? What is the surface like? Is the traffic heavy or lighter than the London to Birmingham stretch? And what happens at the very very end?

It's cobbled mostly, though some parts are plain mud. Small hamlets line either side though they thin out the closer you get to the glacier.

As for what happens at the very end, thats easy, everyone falls off the edge of the earth, never to return (or so I hear).

Sorry, just couldn't resist an open goal

oh and when you get really north the men are so well padded they don't wear shirts, and if you go further into the wilds of Scotland (Hadrian had a wall built there for a reason), the men are all transvestite Billy Conolly soundalikes that use whiskey instead of water in tea.

wilds of Scotland (Hadrian had a wall built there for a reason)

first and only wall to be built up north (certainly past birmingham) they just cant get any builders vans up that way due to the mud!!!

And once past J16 of the M1, the smell of poverty is overwhelming and everything turns black & white.

And once past J16 of the M1, the smell of poverty is overwhelming and everything turns black & white.

ah yes forgot to add the colour not being invented

Well, thank you for the replies. I was being serious, but I realise now that it is not such an easy question - and I cannot blame you for taking the mick a bit.

I have just asked my family about the north, but they know even less than me (difficult to believe I know). I have a few small snippets though as I got these replies - please don't take them too seriously, but they are true.

Mum: "I may have been up there once when I was very young".

Dad: "I remember a visit to Wallingwells, and the toilet was just a hole - the smell was overpowering" He also related to me a lengthy tale about a massive walk over barren fields with a northern relative who rushed ahead (uncle Percy), but each step was painful as he had terrible earache. The cure - olive oil poured in. Dad never went back.

My Nan (now sadly gone) was born in the north (Derbyshire) but fled south at age 16 after an attack from her Mum with a rolling pin. She found work in an asylum for a few years but when she returned to visit her Mum, she was greeted by a smack around the ear and a huge pile of washing to do. My Nan used to tell tales of weekly doses of Liquorice 'scouring solution', getting bashed with a 'copper stick', and only having cooking apples to eat (on a Saturday - as a treat). It was 7 children to a bed and her brother was blinded in the steelworks. My Nan was thrown on the fire by her Dad as a punishment when he was sozzled, but was saved by her elder sister who pulled her out. Nan was proud of her northern heritage, but never returned.

I did go to Yorkshire once as I said, but there was an accident (I fell down a ravine on the first day and gashed my head open). I was taken to Hawes surgery, but, really, the whold trip is just a blur - I had concussion. One kid wandered off into the hills as well I seem to recall, and I'm not sure what happened to him - memory was poor at that time due to the fall.

With all the mystery and half remembered yarns, I find myself wanting to know more - so here I am:).

Ian

Well, thank you for the replies. I was being serious, but I realise now that it is not such an easy question - and I cannot blame you for taking the mick a bit.

I have just asked my family about the north, but they know even less than me (difficult to believe I know). I have a few small snippets though as I got these replies - please don't take them too seriously, but they are true.

Ian

I think you'll find they're pronounced 'whippets'

It's grim ooooop norf lad, no lime juice for your lager top :(, The state of the M1 (turning to cobbles and then a mud track) is the reason so much mail gets lost, we tried the stage coach a couple of years ago when we first got the wheel, but of course these kept getting held up by blokes in black masks looking like Adam Ant. Now we have had to resort back to carrier pigeons, but of course those that aren't shot and eaten do tend to get lost in the coal fumes :grumpy:

Its not a bad life tho, no need for that fancy insulation stuff, wattle and daub is brilliant, but you have to remember not to relieve yoursen agin an outside wall (or an inside one for that matter )

If tha is plannin a visit don't forget yer vacinations

I find myself wanting to know more - so here I am:).

OK. ****-taking over, here is the truth of what the north is really like.

(By the way, Derby and Birmingham are not in the north. They are in the midlands.)

Everybody in Liverpool and Manchester is very, very rich.

When boys leave school at 16 they are immediately employed as professional footballers on wages of £1m plus per year.

Girls leave school at 10 and marry a footballer straight away and move to large mansions in Cheshire.

Any school leavers who are not interested in football start up their own factories making Beatle wigs and become captains of industry.

Ignore tales from ignorant people who tell of stolen hubcaps.

No scouser in his right mind would drive a car with hubcaps.

It's been alloy wheels all the way since the 80s.

2008 is Capital of Culture in Liverpool, which means that when you return to your car you will find it jacked up on books instead of bricks like in the past.

Boys in Manchester who aren't into football, but who have a long and violent criminal background, become politicians.

Those with a background in fraud open up building societies and banks and become millionaires overnight.

There are no office jobs available in Newcastle as due to it's close proximity to Scotland, no-one there can read or write.

So it's manual labour, and every boy and girl, on leaving school, immediately gets a job kick-starting north-sea tugboats or jumbo jets.

In Bradford, the main occupation is kick-starting mumbo-jumbo jets.

So there you have the north in a nutshell.

Just past Carlisle there is Scotland, but as it is a forbidden country nobody really knows what goes on there.

Believe me, some things are better not discussed.

I just remembered "The testing of Eric Olthwaite" with Michael Palin (Ripping Yarns) - brass bands and drizzle. And there was "Golden Gordon" too. I copy from the book here:

The town is dominated by a colliery, whose big wheel is at rest, suggesting solitude and stagnation. A lone trombone, plays some rather moving melody. Eric Olthwaite walks along the "backs" of a line of terraced houses, beside the colliery. It's a grey day, and the rain falls steadily on the empty streets. The houses stretch back-to-back behind him, in long terraces, up the hill. As Eric walks through this dour northern townscape, he thinks aloud, in a thin high-pitched Yorkshire monotone.

"It were always raining in Denley Moor...I remember that...'cept on days when it were fine, and there weren't many of them...not if you include drizzle as rain...and even if it weren't drizzling it were overcast, and there was a lot of moisure in the air...You'd come home damp...as if it had been raining...even if there hadn't actually ben evidence of precipitation in the rain gauge outside the town hall...

:P

Ian

First of all, please forgive this 'not very well travelled' southerner for my lack of knowledge about the north of England:O. Cheers, Ian

and then they wonder why there is a North/South devide..............

and then they also wonder why some people think that London is the center of the universe.................

Are you a polititian Ian? Cos I'm bloody sure that some of the muppets that are running the political parties have never ever seen outside the M25.

Steve

The town is dominated by a colliery, whose big wheel is at rest, suggesting solitude and stagnation.

Ian

I remember pit head gear, on't bank holidays they would fit coal buckets on't outside and call it a ferris wheel. Fair in't town the cry would go oop, and chargehand would charge us a farthing a ride. Course we get out't buckets blacker than't back o't glory ole, and then mutha would chase us down forty foot after leathering our arses:P

London....

Now, there's another mystery. Driving through London from one side to the other is a bit like an initiation. I tried once, but once past Harrow, the driving style changes from 'positive' to 'aggressive'. I paused for one moment at a junction to make sure I was in the correct lane and instantly a horn blew behind. I got so flummoxed that eventually I was turning left and right indisciminantly just to satisfy those behind. My visit to a friend south of the river was history - I ended up lost in the West End, and eventually on the M3. I used half a tank of fuel, kerbed an alloy and was starting to reach the first stages of dehydration (whilst at the same time bursting to spend a penny).

Try the Periphique at rush hour