Coffee tables across the country were being graced by a book that would spark a populist wave of renewed interest in the sciences. Famously including only one equation, Einstein's E=MC2 the author, the late great Dr Stephen Hawking explores the physics behind the cosmos and the then current ideas about the universe's beginning. Using easily accessible charts, illustrations and language, the redoubtable Doctor unlocks the story of how the universe came to be and how even with the vast leaps in technology and ability, we are still faced with mysteries in outer reaches of space, time and spacetime.

At the North Western end of the M6 motorway in the West Midlands, another and very different mystery was beginning to unfold.