Dechmont was a temporary terminus on the northern roundabout of present J3. Whitburn was a temporary terminus near present junction 4A.
Road scheme and chronology data is courtesy SABRE (where much of it was gathered by member Ross Spur), with additional data from the UK Motorway Archive, the Scottish Roads Archive and the Northern Ireland Roads Site.
What might it have been like to stand in one spot and witness the arrival, and the uncertainty, of plans for an urban motorway in West London?
It was the UK's only single-carriageway motorway, and twenty years ago it ceased to exist. This is the story of the strange fascination it held, and of my place in history.
The second part of the story, where we learn why exactly the M4 gets narrower on the final approach to Europe’s biggest city.
If there's trouble crossing the Channel, you'll see the lorries queuing on the M20. What is Operation Stack? Why does it cause so much trouble? And why, more than twenty years after it started, are we still using it?
