
This might be the sort of scene we associate with far-off Third World disasters, with war and revolution. But with Friday afternoon rush hour in a European capital?

Imagine some Biblical tale suddenly unfolding on a London ringroad; the Book of Exodus on the Chiswick Flyover...

Beneath billboards for bank loans and an Auchan hypermarket, a vast column of refugees stretches in to the distance along Hungary’s M1 motorway. And they are carrying all their worldly goods.

In front, headstrong young men wave European Union flags and sing.

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The longest walk: Migrant families block Hungary's M1 motorway yesterday as they set out in blistering heat on the 110-mile journey that will take them to the Austrian border

Carrying their worldly belongings, the thousands of desperate refugees - from young children to the elderly - continued their 100-mile march along the M1 motorway from Budapest in Hungary this evening towards the Austrian border in their frantic bid to build a new life in Europe

More than 150,000 people seeking to enter Europe have reached Hungary this year, with most of them coming through the southern border with Serbia. Many apply for asylum but quickly try to leave for richer EU countries. Pictured: Migrants walk along the M1 near Budapest today

Migrants walk in a long line - stretching for around half a mile - along the highway near Budapest, Hungary, in their bid to reach Austria

To the rear, women coax weary children in the 30-degree heat. Sweating fathers carry toddlers, bottles of water, suitcases, sleeping bags. A few charity volunteers on bicycles hand out supplies to the stragglers. There must be a thousand of them in all.

Behind them, three lanes of traffic have narrowed down to one.

After a week living at the stinking station, they'd had enough

The westbound lorries, buses and commuters on Hungary’s main artery tail back for miles. For now, the drivers are more gobsmacked than angry. But the road rage is building back in Budapest city centre as the chaos spreads – and big crowds are delayed on their way to an already explosive international football match.

Hungarian police line up vans at the intersection for the suburb of Budaors to steer the marchers off the motorway and on to the B-roads. But these pedestrians are having none of it and push their way through.

Hungary’s M1 is the quickest westbound route to the Austrian border 110 miles away. And after a week living on the floor around Budapest’s stinking Keleti railway terminal with precious little food, water, information or humanity – and no trains – around 1,000 refugees finally had enough yesterday.

If the only way to Angela Merkel’s promised land – with room for a reported 800,000 migrants – is on foot, so be it.

These refugees, mainly Syrian, are going to march through Hungary to Austria. And from there, like a reverse Sound Of Music, they will somehow find their way over the hills to Germany.

Hassan Sardani, 24, a chef from the embattled Syrian town of Idlib, waves a poster of Angela Merkel above his head. ‘I love Angela,’ he tells me. Any idea how far it is to reach her? ‘I don’t care. We just walk,’ he says.

For people who have lost their homes, survived leaking, overcrowded boats and already paid the last of their life’s savings to the evil people smugglers, the prospect of a week-long route march is not such a grim ordeal.Then, last night, in a remarkable U-turn came a Hungarian government announcement that buses to the frontier would be provided – for those, at least, prepared to board one.

Riot police at the Rozke detention camp where 300 migrants broke out yesterday in scenes of utter desperation and anguish

An anti-migrant protest by the far-Right Jobbikparty on Hungary's border with Serbia yesterday. They have been likened to neo-Nazis

Yesterday’s epic vision of defiance, misery and desperation was one of many alarming and extraordinary scenes across Hungary. The great migration crisis now finally seems to have surpassed the authorities’ cackhanded attempts to control it.

To the south, more than 300 migrants overcame police and fought their way out of an open-air detention camp on the Serbian border near Roszke. Another 2,000 locked inside were still attempting their own Great Escape last night.

At the same time, the Hungarian government closed the last gap in its new razor wire fence and passed a law criminalising anyone who tampers with it. Meanwhile, there were reports last night that a Pakistani migrant had died falling on to railway tracks while being pursued by police.

In the town of Bicske, where more than 1,000 migrants are housed in a converted army barracks, the stand-off continued between police and the trainload of migrants who were deceived into travelling there on Thursday. Having boarded a train officially destined for the Austrian border, the refugees were diverted in to a Bicske railway siding and ordered on to police buses for transportation to the registration camp.

Realising the hoax, the migrants responded by occupying the train. And they were still on board, in almost insufferable conditions, more than 24 hours later.

This evening, the refugees continued to snake through Budapest and along the M1 motorway in a line stretching nearly half a mile long

Elsewhere in Hungary today, migrants stormed onto the railway tracks between Bicske and Szar - 40km north of Budapest - in a bid to flee

Desperate migrants reach out to get food and water during their epic 100-mile walk out of Budapest, Hungary, towards the Austrian border

Migrants are escorted to buses by Hungarian police near the migrant reception centre in Roszke, Hungary, after breaking through barriers

Thousands of migrants march long the M1 in Hungary in the direction of Austrian border after being refused access to trains in Budapest

Beyond a wire fence and a railway track, a huge international media presence looked on from the platform opposite yesterday afternoon.

The situation resembled nothing less than a grotesque zoo. ‘We don’t need food – except for the children,’ one man shouted at me. ‘We just need action.’

Some have pledged to go on hunger strike but there was a stampede when Hungarian police officers started to pass bottles of water and sandwiches over the fence.

In private, the police are exasperated. They say they do not want to intern these people but to register them, take their fingerprints and photographs, and send them on their way.

The far-Right mob shouts at terrified families

But the migrants fear that EU rules will preclude them from settling in any other country if they register here. And it is not hard to appreciate why that fills them with fear. For Hungary is not merely running out of patience. Many locals are overtly hostile.

Just last night, a local Facebook football network was encouraging hooligans to ‘fight the Syrians’ after last night’s game between Hungary and Romania.

Had the waves of the Aegean not claimed his heartbreakingly short life, Aylan Kurdi would almost certainly have ended up entering the European Union along a filthy stretch of disused railway track I visited this week. Walking past the Serbian watch tower and through the gap in the Hungarian razor wire, he might even have arrived in Hungary in time for the grim welcome party which I encountered. Hundreds of far-Right protesters had marched through the cornfields to stand at this border crossing waving banners and hurling abuse at the latest band of refugees.

In chaotic scenes, thousands chanting 'Germany, Germany' and holding placards streamed down the main highway from Budapest to Vienna

Angry: Thousands of migrants who have been stuck in Budapest for days have started marching out of the city in a bid to make it to Austria

‘Go home! Go home!’ they shouted at a terrified group made up mostly of women and children.

The refugees, already exhausted after days of travel, started to panic and broke into a jog. The protesters, from the extreme nationalist Jobbik party, shook their fists and started a chorus of nationalist chants.

The casual racism here is jaw-dropping

Ironically, these fascists had done the refugees a favour.

Normally, the police would have apprehended anyone coming through the last gap in Hungary’s newly built ‘Iron Curtain’ which now runs the full length of its southern border with Serbia.

The new arrivals would then have been taken to the squalid detention centre where yesterday’s Great Escape took place. In the face of the Jobbik demo, the police let these refugees go on their way. It was a lucky break for the migrants. And there have been precious few of those in Hungary this week.

Thursday’s deceitful trap aboard the train to Bicske has led to comparisons with Hungary’s willing role in the deportation of 450,000 Hungarian Jews in 1944.

Harsh? Disturbingly, the large extremist lobby here argue that Hungary is not being harsh enough.

For make no mistake. Once the shock over this week’s appalling scenes has receded, Europe’s next headache will be the resurgence of the far Right. Hungarians, no doubt, will be stung by comparisons with the Nazi era.

They will argue that their country is a small, impoverished newcomer to the European Union and that it is being overrun. But these things work both ways. Hungary’s fifth largest city is not in Hungary. It is not in neighbouring Austria. It is London. And we do not hear many tales of racism against the 150,000 native Hungarians enjoying the prosperity and benefits of life in the UK. Spare us accusations of British xenophobia. If you’re seeking that, come here to Hungary.

Set out from the railways station carrying their belongings after Hungarian authorities blocked them from boarding western-bound trains

Migrants walking along the M1 motorway towards the Austrian border after fleeing Keleti railway station in Budapest earlier this morning

Migrants start the long walk from Keleti railway station in Budapest, Hungary, towards the Austrian border after failing to get on trains

Migrants rest on the ground in Budaorsi Street on their way out of Budapest after they embarked on the 100-mile walk towards Austria today

Migrants who were refused access to trains in Budapest take a break during their 100-mile walk along the M1 motorway out of Budapest

At times, you have to remind yourself this is a paid-up member of the EU and not some tinpot dictatorship. This is a country which seems positively proud of its hostility to the stream of human misery.

‘Nobody wants to stay in Hungary,’ declared prime minister Viktor Orban earlier this week. ‘Our job is just to register them.’

He also sought to portray his country as defenders of Europe’s Christian identity. ‘Is it not worrying that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian?’ he asked this week.

In fact, Mr Orban and his Fidesz nationalist party are bleeding heart liberals compared to their rivals in Jobbik, a fascist – some might even say neo-Nazi – outfit.

Jobbik’s leaders not only deny the Holocaust (or the ‘Holoscam’ as one senior official called it last year) but the party is also opposed to any investment in Hungary by ‘Jewish’ interests. Formally affiliated to the British National Party, Jobbik is different from the BNP in one important regard. It is Hungary’s third largest political party and won an astonishing 20 per cent of the vote at the last election.

Many Hungarians, like the ladies I met handing out bottled water and advice to migrants in the southern town of Szeged, are ashamed by some of their compatriots. But much of Hungary exhibits the social outlook of Alabama circa 1960.

Whether it is police officers wearing surgical masks and rubber gloves in the presence of migrants or straightforward segregation – foreign faces debarred from shops and cafes – the casual racism here is jaw-dropping.

A man shouts during a protest at Keleti train station in Budapest, where migrants have been held on trains or stopped from getting on them

Conditions are becoming more squalid at Keleti station as 3,000 people remain camped out as they wait for a decision by Hungarian authorities

Police officers arrive to stop a fight that reportedly broke out between radical Hungarian football fans and migrants at Keleti Railway Station

Migrants are escorted to buses by Hungarian riot police in front of a migrant reception centre in Roszke, Hungary, earlier this afternoon

Thousands of migrants march long the M1 in Hungary in the direction of Austrian border after being refused access to trains in Budapest

Earlier today, in Bicske - a town in northern Hungary - some 350 people broke through a police cordon and began walking the road to Austria

Mohamed Amjahid was not only prevented from entering the ticket office at Budapest’s Keleti station this week but the platform staff would not even talk to him. At one point, police would not even let him on to the premises – until he produced a German passport.

Even then, police ordered him to recite his passport number from memory to prove that he had not stolen it. This was straightforward racism, he pointed out, to which the police responded that it was official policy.

He was only grudgingly allowed to go on his way when he produced his German press card. For Mohamed is not a migrant. He is a correspondent from the German paper, Der Tagesspiegel.

Those who do not have fair skin and EU documents are simply treated as second-class human beings.

Faced with fascist abuse and being locked up in a camp, is it any wonder that so many people would rather walk 110 miles down Hungary’s busiest motorway? And how many of them will be prepared to hitch a ride on the government bus?

The refugees snaked through Budapest in a line stretching nearly half a mile as they began the 100-mile journey to the Austrian border. Meanwhile, a stand-off continued for a second day at the station in Bicske, a town that holds one of the country's five camps for asylum seekers

Migrants pictured marching through Budapest having remained for days because they're not allowed to get on trains heading west

Migrants cross the Erzsebet bridge in Budapest, Hungary, as they head for Austria on foot after not being allowed to travel by train

Police handed out cuddly toys to children and water bottles but some migrants poured their drinks onto the ground in disgust

The scenes in Bicske come as Hungary's Prime Minister warned the influx of Muslim refugees was threatening Europe's 'Christian roots'

Desperate: Hungarian lawmakers debated tough new anti-immigration measures on Friday , including criminalising illegal border crossings

Migrants, including whole families, cross the fence to leave a migrant reception centre in Roszke, on the Serbia border on Friday

Around 300 migrants broke out of a camp in Roszke, on the Serbia border, and ran for the motorway in their bid to reach Austrian

Officials said the refugees fled in two groups at around 9.30am GMT, adding that police have taken 'the necessary steps' to detain them