The Anonymous Widower

The Bridge at Glossop

Last week, I went to Manchester.  I did post about The Petticoat Line and the Ladies Night that I listened to on the way down.  I didn’t travel to Manchester by the obvious route of the A14 and M6, but by a route that is ingrained in my past.

When I was at Liverpool University in the 1960s, there was no M6 link and to travel between the M1 at Watford Gap and the M6 at Cannock Chase was a slow crawl through a lot of Coventry and Birmingham.  So you found other routes!

Typically, from London, I’d take the A5 from the M1 and then head north-west past Lichfield and Stone to join the M6 at Stoke, just south of Keele Services.  I did that trip a lot of times, both in my Morris Minor and also by hitching.  The latter was fun and sometimes I’d take six or seven hours, but I once did it in under four from Barnet to Liverpool and every lift was an HGV. There was also the tale of the commercial traveller after the 1966 Cup Final between Everton and Sheffield Wednesday. He was an Everton supporter and I got a lift from Watford all the way back to Liverpool.

But my parents had a house in Felixstowe and after 1966 or so, they lived there permanently.

Travel from there was a nightmare.  If I had chosen to go by train, it would have meant a journey via London, as there was only one train a day from Ipswich to the North West.  And then I’d have had to change at Manchester.  Now there are several trains a day to Liverpool and they do the journey in a lot shorter time.

I did try hitching a couple of times, but once in East Anglia, lifts were few and far between and I often took up to four hours to get from the M1 at Northampton to the Suffolk coast.

So I had to use the faithful Morris Minor.

But the drive from there to Liverpool was even worse than from London.  The A14 as we know it today wasn’t even a dream in anybody’s eye.  Ipswich, Needham Market, Stowmarket, Bury St. Edmunds, Newmarket and Cambridge were not bypassed and there was little dual-carriageway road in between. Believe it or not, it was quicker to cut north, via Thetford and Kings Lynn.  Then it was over Sutton Bridge, past Spalding and through Bourne before joining the A1 to go north.

The A1 was mostly dual carriageway from there, although the Tuxford section was still a single lane crawl.  I then turned east and took the A57, through Worksop and Sheffield, before taking Snake Pass towards Manchester.   

So this was the route I took to Manchester last week.  Or at least the last part, as now the A1 from Cambridge is a very good and open road, with no roundabouts and only a short stretch at Exton with a 50 limit.

I still love that pass through the moors.  The colours made me feel so much better.

But as I remember it Glossop was a lot less busy in the 1960s.  Then it really marked the end of the difficult journey and it was straight through Manchester and on the East Lancs Road to Liverpool.

But now it marks the start of a slow crawl through the villages of Hollingworth and Tintwhistle to the M67.  If there was ever the need for a by-pass then surely that place needs it. One was proposed in 1989, but is not planned to be built until 2016-7.  So in other words, like the missing A11 link, it will not be built.

One thing though stood out on the route and that was where the Glossop railway passed over the road.

Dinfield Viaduct at Glossop

Note the extra piers, that were I think put in when they electrified the line in the 1950s.  Then it was electrified all the way to Sheffield, but now you can only go from Manchester to Glossop.  Sad, because if I remember my Meccano Magazine correctly, the Woodhead Line was one of the most spectacular railway lines in the UK. It has since acquired cult status among railway enthusiasts.

Perhaps one day, they’ll do something useful with the tunnels under the Pennines.

September 15, 2009 Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Manchester, Roads, Trains | Leave a comment