A close encounter on the M6

Stunned drivers travelling on the M6 motorway have recounted a terrifying close encounter after they saw alien beings wandering among the piles of abandoned tarmac, portacabins and JCBs along a 45-mile contra-flow section just south of Knutsford Junction.

Witnesses insist that the extra-terrestrial entities — chillingly posing as motorway maintenance workers and wearing white Alfred McAlpine hard hats and fluorescent yellow jackets — had invaded two entire lanes of the highway. Some even reported that at least one entity was seen using a shovel and on one occasion another was seen to use a digger, shocking proof of the beings' advanced technological capability.

One visibly-shaken woman, who asked not to be named, claims she was hurtling along the single open lane of the motorway at four miles an hour when she was suddenly overtaken by a digger with a yellow flashing light on the roof and an empty oil drum in the bucket heading North within the coned-off area.

The Highways Agency tonight insisted that it had no operatives working on the M6, and suggested that the roving gangs were "probably gypsies looking to have the wheels off an abandoned vehicle".

Such a denial is likely to fuel speculation that The Agency has something to hide. Whether it is that aliens are targetting contra-flows for an invasion of Earth, or simply that they are used just a long-term storage space for road cones and construction equipment remains to be seen.