Spaghetti Junction Birmingham: Tourists are paying £10 for a guided tour of major motorway - have we lost the plot?
Tourists seriously paying £10 for a guided tour of Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction is hilarious - have we lost the plot?
I can think of many, many better ways to spend my time than walking beneath that motorway junction - and better things to spend £10 on. For £10, tourists can reportedly ‘enjoy 45 minute tours to discover canals, rivers, a park, a lake, towpaths, wildlife, street art’. But, let’s be honest, you could just do this for free if you really wanted to.
The BBC reports that ‘seeing what lies underneath the tangle of tarmac has remained an unfulfilled dream’ for ‘many people’. Really? Personally, I think people need to have bigger dreams than seeing what lies beneath that motorway in Birmingham.
Yes it might be ‘iconic’ and the winding roads of the M6 is ‘one of the biggest motorway interchanges in Europe’, but to spend £10 having a walking tour on what lies beneath seems a bit tragic and hilarious to someone who lives near Birmingham and visits the city quite a lot. I can tell you the majority of people in the city and surrounding areas would find the thought of this tour equally amusing.
That being said, and all jokes aside, it is let’s say a - unique - way to spend your time and money and you would proudly be able to say ‘Never have I ever done a guided tour of Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction’. Organisers Explore Birmingham are putting on the two-mile walk this week as part of Birmingham Heritage Week, so of course there is kind of a point to it, but, I don’t think it is something many people will race to go and do.
Guide Al Hassall is putting on the walk to give people a chance to see underneath the famous free-flow interchange and demonstrate how it ties into the city's industrial history - which does sound interesting, but I reckon a guided tour of Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, or of its street art, or even a Peaky Blinders walk would be more of interest.
It is a funny and different idea but offering a guided tour beneath Spaghetti Junction in Birmingham is not one I can take seriously.