M25 coach tour – a great day out

Celebrated as the nation's biggest car park, the road to hell, and the road to nowhere, no one normally chooses to while away a day on the M25. But a coach tour of the 117-mile London orbital has sold out after its £15 tickets went on sale. Designed "for lovers of modern coach travel", the Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach Company tour takes in "amazing sights" including Epping Forest, Heathrow Airport's Terminal Five and "the magnificent" Dartford River Crossing bridge. The view from the bridge, taking in the whole of London, is probably the only truly spectacular thing about the M25 but here are some less heralded highlights: • Titsey Wood services That's what Clackett Lane – one of just three service stations on the route – was more memorably called in the first planning application, after the historic oak woodland around it. The overcrowded service station is little-loved but park up in July and you might bump into a Purple Emperor – this rare and elusive butterfly's caterpillars have been found in the car park. By the end of this year, the Eden Project-esque tropical biome of Butterfly World should also be visible close to the junction with the M1. • Triffids The Guardian's motoring man Sam Wollaston is particularly fond of the Triffid-like cherry-pickers parked by the carriageway between the M40 and the M4. • The North Downs Between junctions 5 and 8, the motorway meanders scenically along the bottom of the North Downs, past steep flowery slopes and a series of grand houses, including Titsey Place and Chevening, where the deputy PM likes to go swimming with the foreign secretary. Imagine how idyllic it would be without six lanes of traffic roaring past. • All Saints Pastoral Centre Currently subject to a controversial sale, this elegant building with its chapel designed by Sir John Ninian Comper in 1927 is a rare historic treat visible from the M25 close to London Colney. • Chalfont Viaduct The motorway has been widened but still manages to squeeze through the handsome blue-brick arches of Chalfont Viaduct, a century-old bridge that carries the railway from High Wycombe to London. • Impressive junction The clockwise sliproad leaving the M25 for Reigate is the longest sliproad in the world outside the US and while Spaghetti Junction outside Birmingham still leads the way, the M25 boasts formidable four-tiered intersections with the M1 in the north and the M23 in the south. From: the guardian