Features / Yate
Yate’s ‘Road to Nowhere’ which is used for filming TV shows
The so-called ‘Road to Nowhere’ is a strip of tarmac 400 metres long that was never finished.
Built in the 1970s and planned to be part of a highway, the road was put on hold due to rising steel costs.
Only a third of the road, which was started in 1974 and was going to connect south Yate and Badminton Road, was completed before the project was abandoned.
is needed now More than ever
WECA gave South Gloucestershire Council £200,000 worth of funding to to conduct a feasibility study on the area in 2019, which assessed the potential for any bypasses for Westerleigh and Coalpit Heath.
The future of the road is still unknown as no developments appear to have been made since, but Conservative MP for Thornbury and Yate, Luke Hall said: “The Road to Nowhere is a symbol of the lack of investment in Yate’s infrastructure over the years.
“As a local man I have huge aspirations for our local area, so opening the road to nowhere and investing in junction 18A onto the M4 would help to reduce congestion and get Yate moving.”
Instead, since the mid-1970s and to the present day, the council offers the road to production companies for use in filming – including the Doctor Who special, Revolution of the Daleks, which was broadcast on New Year’s Day and also featured the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Bordered on all sides by fields and trees from Yate Common and Farmland, the Road to Nowhere offers flexibility for TV crews.
It can be shot as a dual carriageway, or as a single lane country road, all without closing any roads used by through-traffic.
Casualty is regularly filmed on the road, which has kerbs, road marking and even a bridge. The BBC has also filmed Broadchurch and The Salisbury Poisonings on the Road to Nowhere as it can easily be made to look like a large highway or small road, depending on camera angles.
When Broadchurch shot at the road, they made it look like a coast road using CGI, while the most expensive Casualty scene was filmed on the road in 2018, with crashing vehicles, a fake bridge, explosions and a CGI town.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZqLrg7hGFo&feature=emb_title
With programmes from Skins to adverts for NFU Mutual, the road is still used often for filming. The most recent filming took place in August 2020, when the road was closed to film a zombie apocalypse for a currently unnamed project.
The road is free to access, except for when filming is taking place as the road is part of Yate Common.
Although traffic in the area remains problematic, the Road to Nowhere still stays as it is, stretching from the nearby roundabout to a railway branch line.
Main photo: Luke Hall MP
Read more: Flagship BBC drama filmed in Bristol
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