Pearce's Hill

Pearce's Hill is the southern terminus of the M5 and is located south of Exeter. It is a trumpet interchange, with the turn off being for the A30, and the straight on road being the A38. It is numbered as Junction 31 on the M5.

As you reach the end of the M5, the motorway gains a lane on the left, before the two roads diverge - left for the A30 and right for the A38 and A380. As the A30 is actually off on the right, the sliproad drops down, and passes under the through route in a typical trumpet junction. However, traffic moving from the A30 onto the westbound A38 will find that the loop is pretty tight, although by using hatching to reduce the sliproad to one lane things have been improved.

From the west, the A38 just drops a single lane for northbound A30 traffic, but both directions of the mainline through the junction have been reduced from 3 to 2 lanes, with double hard shoulders.

Beyond the junction, to the west, the A38 continues as D3 up to the diverge with the A380 at the bottom of Telegraph Hill, however the hard shoulders are dropped at the western end of the junction, so the A38 cannot be easily upgraded to an M5 extension!

Routes

Route	To	Notes
M5	The MIDLANDS, Exeter, Taunton
A30	Okehampton
A38	Plymouth, Torquay	Torquay via A380