After a great couple of days seeing friends and family and packing up my remaining belongings at my father’s place in Stockport, Dad and I set off on Saturday morning for Brentwood. Much of the journey was easy; we took a leisurely pace, following the A34, A500, M1, A14 and finally the M11.

About half way we stopped for provisions at a service station, alas we didn’t think ahead because within a few hours we’d be wishing we’d taken on plenty of food and water as we hit the total disaster that was the Highways Agency’s response to the lorry fire on the M11.

You see early on Saturday morning a lorry carrying dangerous gas cylinders caught fire on the southbound M11 between junctions six and seven. The motorway was then shut between these two junctions. However the Highway Agency’s response started to go downhill from here.

Long before we reached the M11, while still on the M1, we saw matrix signs warning that the M11 was shut between six and seven. No problem, we thought, we’re coming off at seven anyway. As we approached junction eight of the M11 we saw no sign of congestion and assumed the traffic was being well routed from junction seven.

It wasn’t to be though, a mile after junction eight we hit the traffic jam, a traffic jam we had no clue existed from the matrix signs. And there we remained for the next six hours, moving perhaps just over a mile in that time. Now everyone can expect to get stuck in a traffic jam at some point in their lives and the best thing to do is just be patient, but in this case the problem wasn’t the jam but the total mismanagement of the problem by authorities.

Listening to the radio it became clear the whole mess was becoming worse rather than better. The police and Highways Agency should have shut junction eight long before we passed it at around 2pm, after all the accident beyond junction seven happened at 7am. But no, a huge jam was allowed to build between junctions eight and seven with no warning. After a while the traffic backed up beyond junction eight.

We hadn’t go very far towards junction seven, nearly eight miles to the south of us. We could tell by the low flying airliners passing overhead on route to the nearby runway 20 of Stanstead Airport. Folks where we were adopted a friendly approach and chatting between cars was common as people shared what little news they had.

We saw two young women whose car had overheated being given water by kind drivers ahead of us. Folks were having to take their children up the embankments to relive themselves. But there were examples too of gross stupidity. Many drivers decided to head off down the hard shoulder, making it very difficult for tow-trucks and ambulances that followed later. But folks were getting tense, there was no food or water and people were getting hungry and thirsty, it must have been awful for those with kids.

Even more astounding, as you ca see from the photo is that some idiots decided to drive down the hard shoulder the wrong way. The police soon put a stop to this, but it didn’t stop hundreds of cars jamming the hard shoulder the wrong way and then sideways as they tried to rejoin the regular traffic having seen the cops on the warpath.

During the six hours or so we were stuck on the M11 I’d be surprised if we moved more than a mile. In fact the occasional movement was probably due to the jam bunching closer at the front and the ripple moving down the miles of stopped traffic. News came from the radio to tell us how badly the front of the queue was being handled.

It seems that right at the front, there was only a single lane exit at junction seven. The Highway’s Agency had narrowed the three lanes to one to get people prepared for this single exit. However they were making a complete cock of things by leaving the traffic light system in operation. So there was the situation where empty roundabout lanes would get the green light and the jam would get red, very sensible. Finally someone with at least some intelligence had the traffic lights switched off and got things moving. Not that this was apparent from eight miles back.

So how did we escape the jam? Well some good work by the police behind us started to finally get things sorted. The police actually started working from the back, turning cars around in groups and then convoying us in single file, with hazard lights flashing, the wrong way back up to junction eight. There we joined the closed dual carriageway the wrong way before the police directed us back into the regular road system. Finally we were on the move, but we had a big detour all the way over to Chelmsford before we could head back towards Brentwood.

The system set up at the back of the queue really seemed to be working well and was removing the jam at a terrific pace. However there was still miles and miles of traffic to remove. I wonder exactly how long it took for folks near the front to get out. I wouldn’t be at all surprised, given how bad things were being organised at the front of the jam, for even the cars at the front to have finally been turned around and sent the other way.

So a thumbs up to excellent work, finally, by the police at the back of the queue. But a big thumbs down for the idiots trying to relieve the problem at the front. The were clear mistakes during the whole day that could have prevented this huge mess happening. There should have been much better warning and the motorway closed at junction eight hours before. I just hope no-one died in the eight mile queue thanks to the combined idiocy of drivers heading the wrong way up the hard should and the appalling crisis management by the Highways Agency.

It’s interesting to read the following story on BBC Online about the chaos. Here the Highways Agency says it believes that some people were stuck for up to four hours. Four hours? We were stuck for nearly six and we joined it late in the day, some people must have been in it for over eight hours. Even after the event the agency doesn’t seem to have a clue what was going on.