Watch: We went on the unique guided tour of Birmingham's Spaghetti Junction and found an urban underworld

Spaghetti Junction along the M6 is one of the biggest motorway interchanges in Europe and more than 200,000 vehicles travel on it daily.

Tourists are now being given guided tours of underneath Britain's busiest motorway junction for £13.50. The iconic 52-year-old concrete structure even appears in the Guinness Book of World Records as "the most complex interchange on the British road system'.

The Junction was opened in 1972 and took some four years to complete at a cost of £10 million, and there is hidden scenery lurking below the junction’s huge structures that can now be explored.

I went along to the tour on Saturday morning (October 5) to see why it has proved so popular.

It’s certainly an unusual but enjoyable experience. We enjoyed a 1 hour and 45 minute tour exploring the city’s canals, rivers, a park, a lake, towpaths, wildlife, and street art.

The walking tour takes you to a startling and unique space of Birmingham very few people ever get to see. There is a mini-world underneath the junction, with towpaths, wildlife and street art aplenty.

The tour, which included around 10 other people on the day, got underway at at aroud 11.30am and includes a walk along the Birmingham and Fazeley canal path to the junction. You also get to see the industrial backdrop of Aston towards the start of the tour, and we also crossed the historical Salford Junction.

The tour guide was informative and mentioned that it was actually the press that coined the term ‘spaghetti juction’. They informed us that the junction has also played a part in pop culture. Part of Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight’s film Locke, featuring Tom Hardy, was filmed at the juction.

Now 50 years old, the history of Spaghetti Junction is also discussed in good detail, and we also heard that 1000 families were moved out of the local area to build the complex motorway which devastated the community at the time.

As the tour guide said, it may not be conventionally pretty but this urban underworld is quite the site with its canals and art.

Over the years, some of these spaces have also been used for art exhibitions, dance events and films as the tour explains in good detail. The guide made the tour feel more like a social experience than a lecture.

If you have an interest in local architecture then for just £10, it’s a short but precise tour that you’ll certainly enjoy. But we were also take aback by some of the street art and the junction’s unique history.

Speaking about the tour, the organisers said: “Famous (and infamous) across the UK, it’s one of the best known landmarks in the city.

"Its tangle of roads can strike fear into wary drivers and it often holds a dark place in the psyche of the city, but is this a misunderstood beast? Thundering high above our walking route are the roads of one of the UK’s most complex pieces of road infrastructure.”

You can book the tour online, here.