How to drive the wrong way down a dual carriageway

So on my travels this weekend I got caught up in a massive queue (as I usually seem to whenever travelling more than five miles). The upgrade to the Handy Cross Roundabout junction with the A404 and M40 was causing massive queues which I entered just past the off ramp with Marlow.

Now it was pretty obvious this queue was huge and was not moving anywhere fast. I sat for about 90 seconds in the stationary traffic before a few cars ahead of me started doing U-turns on a dual carriageway. Yes that’s right, a U-turn on a dual carriageway and then started driving down the hard shoulder and driving the wrong way up the on ramp back into Marlow. Yes that’s right, up the ramp that has fast merging traffic coming down it onto the dual carriageway. My first thought was omg something is going to go very wrong here in a few short moments.

But then get this. I did it too.

Now why Nick did you think it was cool to drive the wrong way down a dual carriageway? Well some bright spark had noticed that the junction with Marlow was closed off. It had been coned off at the bottom and at the top. So there was no traffic coming down it and we could sneak out of a queue with impunity. Before I knew it everyone was doing it and filtering back onto local roads and around the queue. Genius. Saved me what I think would be about an hours worth of queuing judging by the slowness and size of the queue I saw today.

Also, advice for folks. Avoid the A404 on weekends for a while whilst they are upgrading the roundabout.