Morning Stuart,

The M1 North from Nottingham will be busy all the way. Long stretches of the M1 are all-lane-running "Smart" motorway with variable limits. The stretch between J29 Chesterfield & J30 (A57 junction) is pretty well always 50mph for air quality issues & J30 to J34 (Meadowhall) had long-term roadworks to add extra Emergency laybys last time I passed through there (slowly).

My commute in the evening was in the opposite direction, but the area from J44 to J40 heading South was very busy (crawling speed at best - usually between 20-30 minutes to cover that stretch) between 5pm & 6pm. On the odd occasion I was late leaving work it was busy but moving around 6.30pm. North bound lanes were similarly conjested, with the worst area being between the same junctions. Bad here as it is the junction between the M1, M62 and M621 (Leeds inner ring road), the junctions are poorly designed and don't function well.

There were long term roadworks between J42 & J47 for replacement of the "cheese cutter" wire rope safety barriers with continuous concrete walls that really screwed up that area due to cutting 4 running lanes down to 2, but that may have ended now (it was scheduled to take over 2 years IIRC).

Travelling on a Monday will help you here - traffic was always heaviest going North Monday mornings, but lightest in the evening (Thursday was the worst eveing traffic). All bets are off if there is an "incident" - which there are distressingly often. Just a broken down vehicle in one of the "all-lane-running" Smart sections can cause a hold-up that stops things for hours - my best commute time for 49 miles was around 50-55 minutes door-to-door, but the worst was 2 3/4 hours !

A65 is a nice road to drive from the M6 outside Kendal down to Skipton, but is very heavily Policed (used to run un-marked Subaru Imprezas to catch the boy racers on there) and frequently slow going - when going up to Scotland I go the "long way round" via the M62, M61 & M6 - adds around 30 miles, but usually faster than the A65. I avoid it altogether on Bank Holiday weekends because of having too mnay near misses from badly ridden bikes ovetaking in stupid places (double white lines are usually there for a reason ! ).

Keighley is a sh!ithole at any time of day & best avoided ! I have to go there occasionally, as my Himalayan came from Colin Appleyards dealership there, but it is a slow and tedious trip.

Best also to be a good boy WRT speed limits, particularly in North Yorkshire - no fixed speed cameras in NY but they have a large & very active fleet of mobile camera vans that are often seen on the bridges over the M1 & A1M as well as in built-up areas.

Nigel B.