The M271 shifts traffic around the west of Southampton, connecting the motorway to the western suburbs and the A33. It isn't a big job, and yet somehow the M271 gets it all wrong.
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.
Today two motorways cross the Severn near Chepstow. But as recently as 1965, the only crossing was a ferry that carried six cars at a time, from Aust to Beachley.