Problems on the Road

Yesterday we had a few minor difficulties. First of all Torbay Council Highways Dept decided to dig a deep hole in Fleet Street. Not somewhere out of the way and hidden, no this hole was right on the bus stop where the road narrows and goes round a slight bend. The only way to move away from the bus stop was to set off and hope half a dozen buses weren't coming down towards you. Then in the middle of the day they brought up the heavy gang, one of those big yellow trucks that featured on a post a few days ago. Water needed to be removed from the drains. Meanwhile Devon Council were up at Aller repairing lots of small pot holes that had mysteriously appeared in the roadway. I say mysteriously because Devon Council repaired all these pot holes last year at great expense; and lots of traffic jams. Continuing while all this was going on was the Great Gas Works Temporary Traffic Lights Saga. On one side a queue 9 tenths of a mile long, on the other, 20 yards. And no one seems able to get the traffic light people to do anything about it.

The nine tenths of a mile side.

Usually I leave Torquay on time and get to Paignton 15 minutes late. Next little difficulty was the railway carriage heading from Churston to Windy Corner. Not on the track but on the road to Brixham. Trains might be able to do 200kph but not on the back of a lowloader. People must have driven from miles and miles to see this carriage, part of the South Devon Steam Train, because there was an almighty traffic jam in the area for an hour or so. Just as that big problem went a motorist in Paignton decide to remodel the crash barrier at the bottom of Hyde Road, which is a very busy section of road. He made a mess of the front of his car doing it which I don't really care about and caused buses to go on a long winded diversion which I do care about. While this lot were happening the lights at the exit to the bus station decided they wouldn't mind a short rest so for a few hours we had problems just getting out onto the road. When we got there we mostly wished we hadn't bothered. Oh yes; the lights at Torre Station also thought it was a rest day. Actually this switch down made it easier to get through the area as we drive down the road which has priority, the problem came after an engineer came down and gave the junction box a good kicking and the lights started working again.

Against all this heavy weight disruptive behaviour the piece of paper with TIMETABLE printed neatly on it didn't stand a chance.