Farewell Angleterre

Why is it that the UK manages to screw up its road maintenance so badly? We have travelled 24 years in France without significant problems due to roadworks. The only times we have been held up significantly are because of a bad accident. The French appear to prefer rolling roadworks which mean a lot of work going on in a small space and minimum inconvenience. In Canada last year we travelled huge distances and yet we only had one incident of significant delay, when a bridge was being replaced. And they have an excuse – they can only do their work in the 5 months of Summer. Canada may have 4 seasons but two of them only last about 1 month and Winters are savage! But in the UK we want to cordon off an area of about a mile either side of a set of roadworks and leave one man and his dog to do the work – when, that is, they are not having a tea break. We have a climate that by-and-large will allow work 12 months of the year and have probably the most congested roads in Europe if not the world. Yet we wait until July and August when most people are on holiday and clogging up the roads to do the work. You would have thought that some minister or perhaps a civil servant would have considered that these months should be avoided if at all possible? Surely someone, somewhere should have worked out that there are endless possibilities for additional bureaucracy and self-interest by Banning roadworks in this period without special dispensation? Thereby ensuring as an additional and unintentional by-product the holiday motorist is able to plan a trip without having to build in an extra 25% journey time for time-critical trips? If I ruled the world......................................

Farewell Angleterre

Bailleul, France