WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 1 00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:01.920 Most of us, at some point in our lives, 2 00:00:01.920 --> 00:00:04.080 have abandoned a project half way through. 3 00:00:04.080 --> 00:00:06.480 But most of us don't have that abandoned project 4 00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:10.160 sitting on full, permanent display to the world. 5 00:00:10.160 --> 00:00:14.960 This is the Road to Nowhere,  in Yate, in south-west England. 6 00:00:15.600 --> 00:00:16.400 Let's go for a walk. 7 00:00:17.600 --> 00:00:21.120 This is 400m of never-completed 1970s highway 8 00:00:21.120 --> 00:00:23.120 that goes from a roundabout to... 9 00:00:23.680 --> 00:00:26.080 well, nowhere, it's cut off by a railway line. 10 00:00:26.080 --> 00:00:28.320 I'm actually a little bit amazed that  I only just found out about this, 11 00:00:28.320 --> 00:00:30.160 because "half-completed road to nowhere", 12 00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:32.400 with lane markings and kerbs and everything, 13 00:00:32.400 --> 00:00:36.000 is very much the sort of thing that I'd expect  younger me to have filmed five years ago. 14 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:38.560 And this place is not a secret.  This is a big public common. 15 00:00:38.560 --> 00:00:40.080 There's folks walking their dogs here. 16 00:00:40.080 --> 00:00:42.880 The public can't drive on this  road, though: it's gated off. 17 00:00:42.880 --> 00:00:45.680 If you look at aerial photos, you  can see where it was meant to go. 18 00:00:45.680 --> 00:00:48.640 There's another roundabout a little way  over there that it would have connected to, 19 00:00:48.640 --> 00:00:50.960 completing a small ring road around the town. 20 00:00:50.960 --> 00:00:55.360 And you can see exactly what the  plan was... it just never happened. 21 00:00:55.360 --> 00:00:58.720 And yes, there are a lot of complaints  about the traffic in this town. 22 00:00:58.720 --> 00:01:00.160 Also on those aerial photos: 23 00:01:00.160 --> 00:01:04.160 some heavy equipment, and a fake bridge being built just down there. 24 00:01:04.160 --> 00:01:06.240 See, this road does have a use. 25 00:01:06.240 --> 00:01:08.240 The local council makes it available for filming, 26 00:01:08.240 --> 00:01:11.600 the whole area is closed occasionally  for television shows to shoot on. 27 00:01:11.600 --> 00:01:13.920 And they can make it look like  either a small country road 28 00:01:13.920 --> 00:01:16.880 or a big highway depending on  where they point their camera. 29 00:01:16.880 --> 00:01:19.760 Broadchurch used careful  angles and one composite shot 30 00:01:19.760 --> 00:01:21.280 to make it look like a coast road. 31 00:01:21.280 --> 00:01:24.080 And hospital drama Casualty have  shot quite a few things here 32 00:01:24.080 --> 00:01:26.800 over the 36 years they've been in production. 33 00:01:26.800 --> 00:01:29.280 That includes their most expensive scenes ever, 34 00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:32.080 which involved a huge fake bridge, crashing vehicles, 35 00:01:32.080 --> 00:01:34.000 adding a CGI town around the road, 36 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:36.080 and setting off an enormous tanker explosion. 37 00:01:36.880 --> 00:01:39.360 For all it cost, it's actually  a little bit underwhelming? 38 00:01:39.360 --> 00:01:42.320 Maybe that's a creative decision,  maybe it looks more realistic that way. 39 00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:43.360 And it's convincing enough. 40 00:01:44.080 --> 00:01:46.160 This is an accidental film set. 41 00:01:46.160 --> 00:01:49.520 At some point, some British studio would  probably have built one of these anyway, 42 00:01:49.520 --> 00:01:50.960 it just wouldn't look as good. 43 00:01:51.520 --> 00:01:54.240 So the question is: why did this happen? 44 00:01:55.520 --> 00:01:58.240 I don't actually know. I gave up on  researching this project half way through. 45 00:01:59.920 --> 00:02:03.200 Okay, no, I'm just kidding, according  to one former local councillor, 46 00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:05.440 it's because the price of steel suddenly went up, 47 00:02:05.440 --> 00:02:08.800 the council didn't want to pay that much for the railway bridge over there, 48 00:02:08.800 --> 00:02:10.080 so they put the whole thing on hold, 49 00:02:10.640 --> 00:02:13.200 and no-one ever started the  project up again afterwards. 50 00:02:13.200 --> 00:02:16.160 There are still occasional vague  political calls to complete it, 51 00:02:16.160 --> 00:02:18.800 but I would be very surprised  if there's any traffic 52 00:02:18.800 --> 00:02:20.960 other than stunt drivers and dog walkers 53 00:02:20.960 --> 00:02:35.840 on the Road to Nowhere any time soon.