Vocal Voices

Strange noise outside and looking out they had come to mend the tank trap in the road at the bottom of my garage drive. it has been very difficult to avoid it and I am sure if a wheel went in I would have been stuck. It has been mended many times before, lasting three or four months and I do not hold much hope for this time as it was full of water lightly raining and they just tipped some cold asphalt in to the increasing dimensions. Many of the roads around here are truly dreadful, potholes and deeply sunken manholes everywhere and I thought of writing to the council about the minor roads to suggest they supply some of those euphemistic notices you see on country roads to say "Unsuitable for motor vehicles"

Sounds like some of the roads over here Pederito

Every year, we have to have the tracking and balancing done on the car

This made me laugh. I hope it does last longer, but it really sounds like they need to dig it out and rectify the substrate and build from there.

Yes, and time was they would have done that Weka. Now everything is about cost cutting, the roads in this country are in a shocking state, especially after the last few hard winters

I agree Kaz - the winters and budgets have really caused havoc with the roads here. One of the roads I drive along had two really deep and quite narrow pot holes on either side of the road, both just wide enough to fit the entire tyre and if you didn't know about them you could do some very serious damage to the car.

Thankfully they were filled with gravel by the people that live on the road (it's a small country lane with about 6 houses on it) and the council have now filled them

They are in a poor state. The council is forever whining about it all being the fault of two bad winters and a very wet spring, but the patchwork-quilt look of the roads tells a different story. It's been a tale of make do and mend for years, not doing proper repairs, and the first harsh winter we have comes along and they start to fall to bits.

Cromwell wrote:but the patchwork-quilt look of the roads tells a different story

Doesn't it? Very often not a straight line in sight. The "repairs" were done by a couple of blokes with a pile of tarred gravel on the back of a tranny and a couple of tamping rods.

If they did a similar job on your driveway Watchdog or Cowboy Builders would be on them in a flash.

Not just the winters Ollie, water percolates through the joints in the patches and traffic soon reverts the situation to square one.