The M4 isn't so bad
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It has been drawn to my attention that I devote far too many of my editorials to moaning about cyclists — so here's something completely different. While stuck in a particularly long traffic jam on my way to Swindon the other day, I started thinking: why is it that American town names sound so much better than British ones? Take Route 66, for example. Places like Amarillo, Winona, Barstow, Gallup and Kingman have a poetic
quality to them. Compare these with Slough, Reading, Bracknell, Wokingham and Swindon, and you can see why Chuck Berry is yet to sing about the M4!
But, while Bobby Troup (who wrote Get Your Kicks on Route 66) probably wouldn't have agreed with me, I reckon this 192-mile motorway actually has more going for it than the Mother Road. For a start, it's still open — well, most of the time anyway! And while Route 66 might have travelled through some nice sounding towns, the M4 is the only road I can think of that links two capital cities. And how many official royal palaces, medieval buried cities and Roman roads did Route 66 pass by/over? The UK's Longest bridge carries the M4 over the second longest river in the British Isles, it passes under one of only two bored tunnels in the UK, and over a heated (although I don't think it's plugged in these days) flyover. Do you want more proof? Well, I'm pretty sure that Route 66 never had a
controversial bus lane or a pair of fourlevel stack interchanges. But best of you can't cycle on
the M4! Will Shiers