The Beatles song, A Day In The Life, includes the line "Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, And although the holes were rather small, they had to count them all". This was after John Lennon had read an article in the Daily Mail about the appalling state of Blackburn's roads. Things are much improved today at least.

White lines were invented in Lancashire - although "Cat's Eye" reflective studs came from Halifax in neighbouring Yorkshire.

The last Turnpike Era toll bar to be removed from Lancashire was on Preston New Road (A677) in the mid 1890s.

The A580 (the Liverpool to East Lancashire Road) was the first pre-motorway purpose built rural inter-city highway constructed. One of the first was the A4123 in the West Midlands, but this never left an urban area.

The first ever Motorway Traffic Jam was on a Bank Holiday weekend in early 1959 when thousands of motorists flocked to Lancashire to drive on the new M6. The 8.5 mile journey, that normally took 8 minutes to complete, took well over an hour.

The first motorway fatality on the M6 was caused by an experimental motorist travelling over 100mph who later lost control of the car and was killed almost instantly.

The first service area in the North West opened at Charnock Richard on the M6, in 1963.

Britain's worst ever motorway pile-up happened on the M6 near Forton Services on October 21, 1985, when a coach collided with stationary traffic, shortly before bursting into flames. 13 people were killed and over 30 seriously injured. Two years later, 8 people were killed in a pile-up on the Lune Bridge at J34 - less than 20 miles from the Forton accident.

Another serious accident occured at M61 J9, when a deisel tanker exploded after colliding with stationary traffic.

M6 J32 was the first three level interchange built on the motorway network - it was originally going to be a grade seperated roundabout but Sir James Drake's traffic predictions suggested this would have been foolish. The ministry accepted his concerns.

The red hard shoulder concept was first used in Lancashire, and promptly followed in other areas where the red shale material was easily available.

The removal of these coloured surfaces saddens me, as they're useful in distinguishing the emergency lane from the live carriageway.

The "rule of the road", which later led to the Highway Code, was first enforced in Lancashire.

The North West has all 4 single carriageway motorways in the UK. These are the A6144(M), which will be downgraded in 2006, the A601(M), and the Walton Summit Motorway. The fourth is the final segment of the M58, the Orrell Link Road. Three of these have been extensively covered on Pathetic Motorways.

These are just some of the more unusual tidbits about the Lancashire network. There are of course plenty of - to coin a term from SABRE - Sabristic features (or just plain "unusual"). These will be added as and when the website grows in size.