The service station is a symbol of civilisational decline, but it doesn't have to be
Britain's service stations have lagged behind the Continent's for too long. Will Hosie finds a few outliers worth rerouting your journey for.
The celestial scoring system of the Michelin Guide currently anoints more than 3,700 restaurants, beacons of light that stretch from New Zealand to the Faroe Islands. Yet, before it became a universal blueprint, the guide served as a bible to specifically French petrolheads, recommending hotels and service stations along the Hexagon’s main motorways to spur car travel and, indirectly, tyre sales for its parent company.
The guide dished out one star to the restaurants worth making a stop for; two stars to those that might warrant a detour; and three to those that served as a destination in their own right. What began as a bit of PR for the automobile industry eventually morphed into the definitive anthology of taste. Thus it is that the destiny of global gastronomy is inextricably tied to that of the motorway — an odd analogy to the British, whose experience of stopping for lunch on the road might, at best, involve a Nando’s.
Compare this with France, where the country’s best roast chicken — according to chef Heston Blumenthal — is found at the Aire du Poulet de Bresse service station just off the A39 near Dijon and a dismal picture of our sceptred isle begins to form. Although British cuisine has come on in leaps and bounds since the first crop of maverick chefs took over our kitchens in the 1980s, their spirit has not extended to the diners that line our own cross-country motorways. These are prosaic, unmodernised spaces, dotted here and there by the airs of routine, where a mini M&S might offer a reprieve from fast-food.
Britain’s top service stations
Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire M40, Junction 2
The service station with the UK’s broadest range of retail outlets, 16 in total (12 eateries). Nearby attractions include the oldest surviving model village in the UK, Bekonscot, which welcomes upwards of 150,000 visitors per annum
Gloucester M5, between Junctions 11A and 12
Britain’s most elegant service station — constructed from Cotswold dry-stone walls and sustainably harvested ash stems from the Forest of Dean — serves 1.6 million hot drinks each year, including 1.1 million coffees
Lancaster M6, between Junctions 32 and 33
Designed by Bill Galloway and Ray Anderson, the juxtaposition of low-rise buildings with the now Grade II-listed Pennine Tower harks back to the golden age of driving. This was once the site of a restaurant serving steak and lobster, although that has since shut down. Lancaster also serves 900,000 hot drinks every year
Tebay, Cumbria M6, between Junctions 38 and 39
Serving 1.1 million hot drinks (including 836,000 coffees) every year, together with 287,000 pies and sausage rolls and 60,000 portions of fish and chips, this famous gateway to the Lake District is strongly committed to the local environment, with a well-frequented duck pond, on-site farm, dog walks and water and a pledge to plant 3,000 trees to establish wildlife corridors
Cairn Lodge, Lanarkshire M74, between Junctions 11 and 12
This most recent addition to the Dunning empire is accessed via a medieval fortress. The gateway to the Highlands is wildly popular, selling 836,000 hot drinks, including 255,000 coffees, every year
Tebay services: Come for the farm-fresh food, stay for the Lake District view.
For some, the service station is a symbol of civilisational decline — a cultural no man’s land that typifies the UK’s woes and inequities. It wasn’t always the case: our oldest station, now known as Watford Gap Services, but first opened as Blue Boar in 1959, was a meeting point for rock-and-roll royalty: Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and the Beatles were known to frequent its 24-hour café. For others, it feels akin to a time warp: somewhere that hasn’t been upgraded since the 1960s. The absence of a decent meal is far from the only grievance: other amenities that seem basic to other countries are often lacking here.
The loos, perhaps the only area in which Britain’s service stations outperform those on the Continent, are only slightly more salubrious than those on the Greek islands. ‘I think, in general, that they are all awful,’ laments author and conservationist Charles Rangeley-Wilson. ‘We’d do the world a favour by reverting to the habits of yesteryear and seeking out local cafés and garages in villages off the main route.’ ‘I don’t stop at service stations anymore,’ concurs Rosie Paterson, Country Life’s Travel Editor. ‘The average rural restaurant has improved so exponentially in the past decade that there is really no need to go via a service station, except to refuel and, perhaps, grab a Diet Coke.’
Yet rerouting via a village for a pit stop can be tricky. ‘It sometimes feels as if our motorways are designed to entrap,’ says Nicole Maslen, a producer at Goalhanger Podcasts who often travels for work. ‘We also lack awareness of local alternatives, having never benefitted from a dedicated guide the way that France has.’ The numbers, nonetheless, suggest that service stations remain immensely popular. Moto, the UK’s largest operator, records an average of more than 120 million visits from drivers every year. The same reasons to hate the service station are, for some, the reasons to love them.
‘Everyone has a favourite,’ notes Tabitha Steemson, a manager at CT Group, ‘and I love mine precisely because it is a bit s***.’ Her culprit is Leigh Delamere, of Gavin & Stacey fame — among the largest service stations in Europe and one of the many operated by Moto. It sits on the M4 between Junctions 17 and 18, near Chippenham, Wiltshire. Such a service station’s appeal is associative: a necessary evil en route to making memories.
'I was always taught by my father that lorries were an indication of a decent brekkie — and that is pertinent here'
The gas stations of the USA preserve an aesthetic of Americana that has long inspired artists and travellers alike.
There are, nonetheless, some green flags to look out for. ‘Take the Red Lion Truck Stop off the M1 near Northampton,’ points out motoring correspondent Adam Hay-Nicholls. ‘I was always taught by my father that lorries were an indication of a decent brekkie — and that is pertinent here.’ The service station is also somewhere we return out of loyalty for the familiar. ‘You know my favourite,’ says my friend Claudia Everest-Phillips, a paralegal and amateur artist. I do: it’s the beloved Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, where we have often stopped when travelling to and from the Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire.
The most popular service stations in the country have gentrified themselves in order to improve. When the M6 was built in the 1960s, slicing through land belonging to the Dunning family in Cumbria, its proprietors decided to open a service station that has grown, since 1972, into a beacon of the British road. Tebay Services offers none of the trappings found among its peers: no fast food, no slot machines, no unsanitised massage chairs. Instead, it has farm shops, selling produce that comes from Dunning-owned fields and other local growers. An accompanying hotel and caravan park have since been opened.
‘We were the UK’s first family-run motorway service area,’ Sarah Dunning says, ‘a friendly refuge sheltered behind a plantation of Scots pines from the sound and fury of the motorway.’ The food was — and is still — simple and local, served in a 40-seat restaurant next to a small shop selling crafts, as well as drivers’ essentials. The model worked. In 1992, the Dunnings opened a southbound station on the same site and have since expanded to other parts of the country.
Further stations were launched, in Gloucestershire in 2014 and at Cairn Lodge, Lanarkshire, in 2019 (on a site acquired from the MacInnes family). ‘Drivers will re-route journeys to go via Tebay,’ observes author and editor Simon Mills. ‘It’s like a pilgrimage. They show up with their hampers and their tote bags and load up their Rovers as if it’s the weekly shop. Come to think of it, for some, it might be.’
Britain’s worst service stations
Fleet, Hampshire M3, between junctions 4A and 5
Primary grievances: State of loos (avoid at all costs after Glastonbury) and the price of fuel
Thurrock, Essex M25, between junctions 30 and 31
Primary grievances: Awful shower queues and anecdotal reports of food poisoning
Rownhams, Hampshire M27, between junctions 3 and 4
Primary grievances: That the space is ‘packed with utter goblins’ and the apathetic McDonald’s staff
Bridgwater, Somerset M5, junction 24
Primary grievances: State of loos. Has a multi-storey car park despite being, by some accounts, ‘the size of a garden shed’
Heston, London M4, between junctions 2 and 3
Primary grievances: Conditions that have been described as both ‘cramped’ and ‘post-apocalyptic’. Harsh lighting
The Dunning-owned Gloucester services continues the Tebay tradition, featuring lots of food and wares from local producers.
As overall standards improve, so do expectations: today, one in five drivers will make a point of avoiding certain service stations because they are deemed unsuitable (according to www.confused.com), in the same way that many will add their preferred service station as a deliberate stop. However, it’s more than the quality of produce and service that draws motorists, again and again, to the holy trinity that is Tebay-Gloucester-Cairn.
‘The idea [behind expanding to the Gloucestershire site] was born in 2007,’ Dunning explains, ‘when conversations began on the Matson housing estate [on the edge of the city of Gloucester] about how the M5 motorway could become an asset for the local community, creating jobs and generating sustainable income.’ Today, the Farmshop and Kitchen work with more than 130 local producers within a 30-mile radius, alongside a further 70 producers from across the South-West.
The service-station edifice itself has also proved inspirational to photographers and artists, such as the American realist painter Edward Hopper, since the early days of motoring. ‘Quite why this is is hard to pin down,’ states Philip Butler, a photographer whose anthology, 226 Garages and Service Stations, was published in September last year. ‘It started in the USA, where gas stations might be the only structure on a highway for miles — and the little illuminated outposts were considered to be a safe haven on a seemingly endless journey.’
The Clock Garage in Derbyshire is one of the best preserved Art Deco garages.
Architectural historians may find more to love if they go further back. ‘The Texaco in East Sheen, London SW14, is a rare example of a 1920s filling station still in daily use,’ notes Butler . ‘For the Art Deco lover, the Clock Garage, now a Kwik Fit in Woodville, Derbyshire, is one of the best preserved 1930s sites.’ One in Worcestershire might look at home on the @accidentallywesanderson Instagram account, owing to its soothing symmetry: the Regal Garage in Upton upon Severn. Service stations are also ‘a symbol of escapism and the romance of the open road,’ Butler says.
For philosopher Alain de Botton, the service station shares a poetic language with the airport and train carriage. ‘In spite of their architectural compromises and discomforts,’ he wrote in 2002’s The Art of Travel, ‘we implicitly feel that these isolated places offer us a material setting for an alternative to the selfish ease, the habits and confinement of the ordinary, rooted world.’
It is a profound, and no doubt truthful, statement, although it helps if the services in question offer more than a Starbucks.
This feature originally appeared in the August 26, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe
