The A14 in Cambridgeshire was left looking like something from a “horror film” after a lorry crash left a sea of tomato purée across the road.
Some 23 miles of the carriageway’s westbound road – stretching from Cambridge to Brampton – was shut after a collision between two lorries on Tuesday evening.
Although images from the scene show the road covered in what appeared to be an ominous red liquid, police and Highways England revealed that the sauce of the spill was actually tomato purée.
Cambridgeshire Police tweeted: “What looked like the set of a horror film was actually thousands of squashed tomatoes.”
Pictures posted online inspired some sharp responses and sundry other puns making light of the news.
One person tweeted: “I went pasta that. Took a while for the traffic to ketchup.”
Another asked: “And I imagine when it does reopen cars will have to passata slow speed?”
Others joked that it was lucky the crash did not occur near Spaghetti Junction.
The road closure was lifted at 2:03pm on Wednesday.
I went pasta that. Took a while for the traffic to ketchup.
— CraigDLyons (@craigDLyons) June 2, 2021
Ahead of its reopening, a spokesman for Highways England said: “Emergency resurfacing work is taking place where the incident occurred around 7:10pm yesterday evening, involving two HGVs, one of which lost its load and damaged the carriageway.”
One driver was injured during the collision, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Roads Policing Unit confirmed via Twitter.
The unit said that an investigation into the incident is ongoing.
