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‘We live underneath Spaghetti Junction – our homes get covered in dirt and the noise is terrible but we love it’
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Residents living underneath Birmingham’s infamous Spaghetti Junction say despite the noise, pollution and traffic they love it – and it even comes with its own ‘beach’. Gravelly Hill Interchange is the UK’s busiest motorway junction and is one of the country’s most iconic concrete structures which turned 50 last year. The winding labyrinth of roads along the M6 is also one of the biggest motorway interchanges in Europe and more than 200,000 vehicles travel on it daily. It even appears in the Guinness Book of World Records, as “the most complex interchange on the British road system’. But nestled underneath the twisting five levels of motorway lanes lies a community of people who live a stones throw away from the sprawling flyovers. Locals admit they can be woken up early by beeping horns and boy racers using the roads as a race track. Others say sirens can be heard at all hours and traffic causes dust and dirt to settle in their homes, gardens and on cars. But despite a string of issues that would seemingly put most house-hunters off, many residents there say they enjoy living by such an iconic landmark. Dad-of-one Brian Thomas, 45, said he found the noise of the traffic soothing and joked that it even came with its own beach – a pile of industrial sand next to the canal. He said: “I don’t mind it, I find the traffic quite soothing. You get used to it and it’s got good transport links as you can imagine. “We’ve also got our own beach, of sorts. What more could you want? It’s a landmark recognised across the country. I’m sort of proud to live near here.” Business owner Aqeel Naeem, 35, who runs a shop which repairs electrical goods, said the roads aren’t an issue for him and act as a landmark. He said: “I don’t live far from here at all, have done for 10 years. It doesn’t bother me. I actually enjoy it otherwise it gets quiet. “The road is mostly busy from people who want to take the motorway to get off of it. It can get quite dusty. “A good thing is that you can tell someone the direction to the business, it acts as a landmark.” Mum-of-two, Meeka, 33, an NHS worker, said: “It did bother me at first that it was this close but it’s got triple glazing so you can’t hear it. “I only hear the lorries honking their horn or when an ambulance goes past. It’s not all the time. It doesn’t bother me so much now. “I don’t really think about pollution at all. There’s a wooded bit so there’s a section that absorbs the noise. “Because there’s a lot of road traffic there are a few homeless people who stand by the lights. “But I’ve been woken up by the racers in the night who go speeding by. I can hear them racing. They must be doing it on the motorway.” Others say living by the junction, which connects the M6 to the A38M leading into the heart of Birmingham, can be an issue. Mark McKinley has lived on Copeley Hill beside the junction for the past six years and branded it a “tangled mess”. Dad-of-two Mark, 52, who works in mental health, said: “Noise can be an issue in the evening. “It’s more of an issue when you get the racing in the evening. There’s been a few accidents. “If you don’t hear sirens, you get worried. You get used to it. “It’s constant. The wagons don’t stop on the M6. We’ve got all the roads here, it’s a tangled mess of everything here. “We get a lot of dirt that comes off the traffic. I have a brand new car and I have to clean it every day. The amount of dust and rubbish coming off of it is ridiculous.” Mark said he also fears that if someone was to manage to smash through the roads barriers that it could potentially end up in his house. He added: “If someone was to crash off there they’d have to dodge to avoid the house. “You get people throwing rubbish off. You get a lot of cars that have overheated and dumped on our road. “When Aston Villa play it gets rammed with cars. People park here, they dump the cars everywhere. They literally park straight across all the time “I have been woken up early when they toot their horns early or sirens.” Another local said that she was moving house due to living in such close proximity to what was once featured as one of the ‘world’s most stressful road junctions’. The unnamed woman said: “The noise is what’s bothering me. It’s too loud and is constantly bothering me so I want to see if I can get away.” Spaghetti Junction was opened in 1972 and took some four years to complete at a cost of £10 million. It has 559 concrete columns – some reaching 80 feet high – is reinforced by 13,000 tonnes of steel and covers an area of 30 acres. If you wanted to drive along every road at Gravelly Hill Interchange, you would need to travel about 73 miles and it also serves 18 different routes.