If the Highways agency are involved - about 12 hours so it would seem!!!
Let me explain. For those of you who don't know, the Highway Agency are a UK government agency who are responsible for the motorways. They maintain them, they do those messages on the matrix boards (you know the ones that tell you there is a 30 mile and hour limit when you are stuck in stationary traffic) and they also have patrol officers, who come and sit on the hard shoulder behind your broken down vehicle with their flashy orange lights, while you wait for your recovery company. They also close the motorways when needs be - like a serious incident and their patrol officers are supposed to be able to assist the police in certain things, so we don't end up with the police sat on slip roads to close them, so the police can be off doing other things.
Anyway, the other morning I got on the motorway to go to work, and promptly was directed off again at the next junction by the Highways Agency patrol officers. Motorway is shut because............at the time no idea.
Anyway, I find out later it is because in the storm we had on valentines night, a very large tree blew down - blocked the hard shoulder and two and half lanes of the motorway. Fine, shut the motorway, safest thing to do. But the tree came down at midnight, and the motorway was shut until the following midday.
Ok, it was a big tree, but 12 hours??? What were they using to chop it up............a nail file?!
