SUNDAY shoppers at Lakeside unexpectedly encountered heavy traffic on Sunday morning after a series of accidents and lorry fires on neighbouring roads.

Fire crews from west Essex and east London were kept busy after reports of a fully ladened petrol tanker had caught fire on the clockwise carriage of the M25, between the A13 and A127 junctions, at just after 5am yesterday.

Firefighters set up a 200 metre exclusion zone around the tanker as a precaution, effectively closing the entire M25 - and also used a thermal imaging camera to identify hotspots on the tanker container itself in an effort to reduce the chances of explosion.

<see Monday's Echo for full story>