Sunday started out great. Nice weather and a good drive up to London at 0715. Everywhere on time, which was great as was being shown where a new cafe was!!
Arrived in London at 1030 and had to wait for the 1100 coach to come in, he arrived on time and we headed off for South London. After a nice lunch we went and parked by the Thames. Very nice pleasant afternoon.
Left Victoria at 1430. Drive out to Heathrow was good and as I had a dupe arranged to go directly to Bath. This meant we should have arrived in bath at around 1730.
As we approached J14 signs the matrix signs where showing '50' no problem there as they often show this.
However as we passed Membury they changed to 40 and - standstill!!
After about 10mins I rang control and asked them to check Traffic master. The reply was ' M4 J14 -J15 Closed!!!!
Ok big problem now, passengers, driving hours etc.
We got reports after an hour that the earliest the motorway would reopen was 2030 (it was 1800) things were now serious, very serious. At 1900 things began to happen, the Highways agency turned up and began to turn traffic around. We ended up doing a 'U' turn and heading in a convoy the wrong way up the M4 in lane 3!!!.
When we got to J14 we were sent back down the slip road and onto to the A338. The journey to Marlbough was a nightmare. When we got to Marlborough most of the traffic headed back to the M4 leaving the A4 free. We had a good run back to Bath via Melksham and finally arrived back in Bath at 2130, 31/2 hours late!!! Still the passengers were very good and calm, thankfully.
Was supposed to start work at 0600 but with had well exceeded the driving hours so had a nice 0900 - 1600 day today!!!
Hopefully tomorrow will be better.
