M50 motorway

The M50 is a motorway in Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. It links the M5 at junction 8, six kilometres north-north-east of Tewkesbury, with the A40 near Ross-on-Wye. The road is twenty-two miles long and was fully opened in 1962. It is also called the Ross Spur because it carries traffic towards South Wales. The motorway crosses the River Severn on the Queenhill Bridge and Viaduct over the flood plain. North of Newent it ends at junction 4 where the A449, A40 and A465 meet. The route was built early because it forms a main road from the Midlands and northern Britain into South Wales. Construction was split into four contracts between 1958 and 1962. Tarmac Construction built the first section, R M Douglas Construction built the next two, and A E Farr Ltd completed the final part. Harold Watkinson, the Minister of Transport, started work in 1958 by firing a flare. The motorway has kept its original two-lane layout in each direction and has never been widened. At both ends there are motorway service stations. Strensham services lie north of the M50’s north-eastern end at junction 8 of the M5. An Esso garage stands on the short combined section of the A449 and A40 heading west. The starting junction was once a free-flowing trumpet but became a roundabout with an M5 flyover when the M5 was widened in the 1990s. Junction 1 is a partial cloverleaf where the M50 meets the A38. A long-disused railway bridge over the motorway was dismantled in 2012 and donated to the Bluebell Railway.