A holiday up the M1

If you’ve been following me on Twitter (that’s about three people then), you’ll have noticed that on Saturday I went on “holiday” up the M1.

Starting at the Ace Cafe bikers’ hangout on the North Circular - a prototype for the modern service station that reopened in 1994 after a 25-year closure - we travelled up the M1 all the way to Watford Gap in an attempt to unravel the architectural and cultural significance of the route, focusing especially on the service stations. Update: James Adams has uploaded some excellent shots of the day to Flickr.

The trip was organised by the School of Life, a new venture based in Bloomsbury, that runs courses, sermons and “holidays” like this one for people who enjoy thinking about things just for the sake of it. It recently ran a holiday to the Isle of Wight with Martin Parr and is planning a holiday to Heathrow Airport with Alain de Botton (pictured on the far right), who also popped up yesterday at Newport Pagnell to explain the unique qualities of motorway service stations.

De Botton is a surprisingly bouncy chap and the author of The Art of Travel. His theory, explained yesterday as bemused KFC punters looked on, is that beauty can be defined in terms of how interesting something is, and that service stations are very, very interesting. He believes the travelling mindset releases something in our brains that we don’t have when at home, and that this, in combination with the inherent loneliness and “good sadness” of the service station can lead to creative, interesting thoughts.

The trip was led by archichect and design historian David Lawrence (pictured to the left of de Botton in the green jumper), who is without doubt Britain’s foremost motorway enthusiast and a genuine expert in his chosen field. Lawrence is the only person in Britain with a doctorate in motorway service stations. His thesis, which required him to travel 8,000 miles by motorway, was published as a book called Always A Welcome: The Glove Compartment History of the British Motorway Service Area (it’s out of print but I’m assured it’s excellent). He exhibits some traits of the gonzo journalist, having put himself in the extraordinary position of spending Christmas 1998 in a Travelodge next to a service station near Newcastle just to see what it was like.

Lawrence guided discussions with admirable clarity of thought. There was a detailed examination of the origins of the service station, which lie in “road houses” for rich motorists of the 1950s. As the M1 was completed, service station operators like Forte (owner of the Waldorf and Criterion hotels) sought to deliver a luxury experience for diners.

The dislocation of service areas from their surroundings, and what this means for the experience of visiting one, was also investigated.

We also explored the experience of motorway service station life with staff at both Newport Pagnell and Watford Gap. Lawrence took great pleasure in the Roadchef staff member badge that was made for him by Michelle, the duty manager at the latter.

If spending a day in the company of these people and around a dozen other curious motorway enthusiasts sounds a little bizarre then make no mistake, it was. It was perhaps the most postmodern experience I’ve ever had. But it was refreshing to take a look at something as ordinary as the motorway and its service areas through fresh eyes. I felt like I had landed from another planet and was being given a crash course in the ways of the British human.

Last photograph by James Adams. Some rights reserved.

Updated Friday 31 October: BBC News reporter Stephanie Holmes, who was on the trip, has written a feature about the day called The M1 appreciation course for the BBC News website.

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