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Been watching the weather like a hawk since the middle of the week as we had planned to try out a new route. But since Wednesday the weather had been forecasting a wet weekend and I am not keen on riding in the wet (don’t mind to much if it starts dry and then rains while I am out but don’t want to start in the wet).

There was one slim chance as a couple of the weather site were promising a cloudy rain free start early on Saturday with the rain moving in by midday. So I went to bed last night vowing to get up a soon as it was light and providing it was not raining going out riding on the local heath. 7:15am dawned, damp wet and miserable but no rain so I dragged my body out of bed by 8:00am (I was tired) and got the bikes ready for the off…………………….and it started raining. Due to the colour of the sky we decided to wait and see if it would stop. 45 minute later we were on our way. Apart from a couple of minor shower there was no rain, at one stage we even had blue sky!

Everything was going well until we got to the half way mark when we came across a fallen tree completely blocking our way with no direct route around it we went of in search of a new route home. What we found was one of the most enjoyable rides we have had to date, along muddy tracks, through small streams until we found ourselves back at an earlier section of our route, we had done a very large loop. In-fact this was better than our normal route and it will certainly be a route we will try again. In total we did 10.7 mile (possibly more as the gps lost the signal) and to be honest I was not in anyway tired I could of carried on riding I was that relaxed, although my stomach was saying it could do with some breakfast.

Weather permitting I will be out again tomorrow, not sure which route I will try, have a couple in mind, just want to get out and play in the mud again!!

You sometimes have to wonder about the logic of those in power, particularly your local council. There is a dual carriageway near us, a major artery when it comes to traffic in and out of the local town and surrounding areas. The dual carriageway is to undergo a major refurbishment in the new year and as a preliminary exercise the local authority are removing all the reptiles (the road run next to forest and heathland which is home to smooth snakes and sand lizard, both protected species) from the verge area and clearing a lot of the undergrowth.

For the past couple off weeks one of the inbound carriageways has been permanently coned off so that stretch of the road is extremely busy with two mile tail backs normal in both morning and evening rush hours. Now they don’t start work till 7:30am and they finish around 4:30am which is 9 hours, this is equal to 37.5% of the day. So for 62.5% of the day the coned off carriageway is empty with no working going on. while the traffic queues up around the cones

Now as you can imagine the local shop owners and business have kicked up a stink over this, it is an important time of the year for them leading up-to Christmas etc. So what brainwave have the local authority come up with to get help the local shop owners and business??? lets stop work on the inbound lane and move the reptile collecting and verge clearing to the outbound carriageway!!!

Er let me get this right, we welcome visitor to our town but if you have to sit in a traffic jam to get out of our town well hell we don’t care……………………

I use the A34 from Winchester to Oxford on a regular basis, a section from Tothill to north of Newbury has just been re-surfaced with all the work going on overnight. This is a major artery for the south of England, while not on the same scale the A338 is a major artery for the Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch areas. So why can’t our local authority take a leave out of the Berkshire local authority book and do the work overnight so as to reduce the traffic chaos that is happening.

But it is not just the traffic that is jammed up on the A338, all the other surrounding routes are jammed up as well as motorist try to find their way around the traffic, local residential roads are blocked with traffic as more traffic try to find a faster, less traffic jammed way home.

I could go on but I just feel so frustrated by it all…………..

For more information on this mess from the local authority here is a link to information about the work on their web site

Web link