The worst two words in the dead of night? ‘Motorway closed’ | Adrian Chiles

You are shunted into side streets, crawling along, united with your fellow drivers in wordless despair. Last week, at 2am, my spirit broke

The worst three words in the transport lexicon are often said to be “rail”, “replacement” and “bus”, in that order. But there’s worse. “Motorway closed” is worse. At least with rail replacement buses you get fair warning, on booking apps and whatnot. You can resolve to embrace the pain or, more likely, abandon the journey. Motorway closures, in the dead of night, invariably come as a nasty surprise.

Waze, Google Maps, Apple Maps, etc can reliably get you from a car park in Penzance to a cul-de-sac in East Kilbride, but often can’t tell the difference between an open motorway and a shut motorway in the middle of the night. Football fans know all about this. You travel across the country for an evening match, and you lose. The prospect of a long drive home blackens your mood further, but as you slope away from the ground you cling to one consoling thought: at least there won’t be much traffic on the road. And this is true, but light motorway traffic looks rather like heavy traffic once it’s bullied on to side roads. Out of nowhere come the sign, the cones, the arc lights, and off you go, ushered with the other hapless nightbirds into the slow, black void. Dispossessed, demoralised, you crawl along unfamiliar roads, united in wordless despair.