At 6.14am on Friday 23 October, National Highways’ traffic control centre in Godstone received 312 calls in nine minutes reporting a wheat field on the southbound M25 between junctions 15 and 16. The duty manager, Derek Pumm, sent a drone. The drone confirmed 400 metres of mature wheat, harvested, baled and stacked at the hard shoulder. A spokesperson for National Highways, Cassandra Leech, said the surface was ‘temporarily unavailable due to a data migration error’ and advised drivers to use the M4. Asked who harvested the wheat, she said the matter was ‘commercially sensitive’.
Let me run a full-stack surface audit on this. The tarmac has been swapped for a crop. The hinge latency on the hard shoulder is off the charts. You won’t have noticed, because you still think a road is a flat thing that goes somewhere. It isn’t. It’s a contractual obligation with a painted line down the middle. The state has lost the M25. Not misplaced it, not closed it for resurfacing. Lost it. Like a car key. Like my marriage. Whatever. Who gives a toss.
The wheat goes on sale at eight pounds fifty a box
By Tuesday the wheat had been milled, boxed and branded ‘M25 Crunch’ by a St Albans food startup called Grainway Ltd, whose director, Oliver Runciman, said he acquired the crop ‘in good faith from a man with a van’. Boxes retailed at £8.50, with 40p per box pledged to the Campaign for Better Roads, a charity that the Charity Commission confirms has never been registered. Runciman said the omission was ‘an admin thing’ and that the cereal was ‘high in fibre and low in provenance’. Twelve thousand boxes sold in four days.
“We saw a gap in the breakfast market for infrastructure with a story,” said Runciman. “People are tired of oats that have never carried a single lorry.”
I have invented a better product. Pocket Pumm, £49.99. A duty manager who lives in your pocket. He loses roads for you, on demand. He also handles customer complaints, divorce paperwork and the lingering smell of damp that has been in my hallway since 2019. I am not saying the state should buy it. I am saying the state should buy it and also give me the £14 million they are about to waste on whether roads should exist at all.
The Transport Secretary says the road is having a strategic pause
In the Commons on Wednesday, the Transport Secretary, Fiona Groat, said the M25 was ‘a legacy asset undergoing a strategic pause’ and that the department would not be ‘rushing to reinstate a surface that has clearly failed its own stress test’. She announced a £14 million feasibility study, led by the consultancy Pantechnicon Partners, into whether roads should exist at all. The study will report in 2029. Asked by the Labour MP for Dartford whether the wheat would be returned, Groat said the wheat was ‘a matter for the market’.
“The road is not missing,” said Groat. “It is repositioning itself within a wider agricultural framework. We are simply asking whether the taxpayer should continue to subsidise a surface that has chosen another career.”
This is what happens when you let the state manage anything. They can’t even lose a road properly. They lose it, and then they hold a feasibility study into whether losing it was the right strategic call. Meanwhile my ex-wife’s new partner, a man called Gary from Swindon, has a shed that is structurally identical to the Northern Line, and nobody is funding a study into that. I have done the research. It is not a shed. It is a transport network. It is also where I suspect my good socks have gone.
A freedom of information request finds the invoice
On Thursday, a request by the pressure group Motorists United found that the wheat was planted by Herts Binary Solutions, which was paid £2.3 million in March to upgrade National Highways’ ‘surface inventory’. The firm’s managing director, Praveen Oad, said a junior developer ‘uploaded a grain futures portfolio instead of a road surface’ and that the error was ‘within tolerance’. The same firm was paid £4.1 million in 2024 to digitise the A14, which is now a podcast.
“The systems were designed to be agile,” said Oad. “In the same way a tractor is a system for making the ground not a road.”
You see? This is what I have been telling you. There is no such thing as AI. There is a man in a call centre in Letchworth called Keith, and Keith has uploaded a pile of wheat where a road should be. He is very tired. He has also, I suspect, deleted the A1. I drove to Leeds last month and ended up in a car park in Doncaster. I do not blame Keith. I blame the people who gave Keith a keyboard and a budget. I blame the state. I blame Gary. I blame my piles, which have been flaring up all week and are, frankly, not so bad.
The gritter breaks down at junction 15
The road was reinstated at 5.50am on Friday 30 October. The first vehicle to use it was a Hertfordshire council gritter, which broke down at junction 15 after 200 yards. Its driver, Kevin Tumbridge, said the surface was ‘a bit wheaty’. National Highways said the gritter’s failure was ‘unrelated to the migration’ and that the wheat had been ‘repurposed as a road safety asset’. The remaining boxes of M25 Crunch are being sold off at £12.99 as a collector’s item.
“I have driven on gravel, on cobbles, on a frozen lake in 1997,” said Tumbridge. “I have never driven on a mistake.”
The road is back. The wheat is gone, except where it is a collector’s item. The feasibility study will report in 2029, which is also when I expect to finish my own investigation into why my bins keep being moved by a man who is definitely not Keith but who has the same posture. I have already spent £49.99 on a prototype. It has not helped. The road is back, and I still have piles. That is the state of things. That is the state of the M25. That is the state of me. I am going to eat a box of M25 Crunch and pretend the past week never happened. The cereal tastes like duty of care and regret. Whatever. Who gives a toss.
