This morning I awoke for the 1st time in weeks feeling.. well the best I can describe it is feeling less dark, refreshed, a spring in my step & generally feeling less old. All I can say is that the past few months have made life feeling a tad dark inside & tiring mentally as well as physically & a lot older than I am & have felt in a long time. There's been a few changes in my life I can't undo & after the 1st decent night sleep last night in quite a while, I feel now it's time to close this chapter of my life for the past 10yrs & accept these changes are here to stay & time to open the next chapter of my life.
I know I won't be the person I worked so hard to be for the past decade, sure ain't gone how I want it & definitely not completely stick free. It hasn't been a complete failure, I have gained a lot from the past 10yrs & gained new experiences that will stay with me for life, etc... The next chapter has already gone off to a good start with having a job that I love, enjoy to be in & slowly expanding my knowledge & hours working there.
Cycling will still is part of my life, maybe not quite how I wanted it to go as have to watch my knee & make sure it don't flare up but not letting it disappear from my life like it did 20yrs ago. Cycling does help keep knee going & with me now working too it'll help the knee a lot. Also new bikes are on the cards as well as the continuing rebuild of my Roadrunner project to help with my knee as looking for more suitable lighter bikes.
The flat has been on hold with decorating for far too long, combination of knee issues & work/life balance needed it's fell to the back of the list & it's time to re-address that. So working on starting to get flat back in order.
So here's to more good mornings like I had today to make my day a great day & look forward to better things in life for this next chapter of my life...
(If you have read the blog & want to see the updates, please scroll to the end of the blog)
Just over a year ago I started cycling again & one thing I have noticed is the piss poor conditions of some of the roads that are meant to be part of the National Cycle Network. But there is one road I use a lot & have done by bus & now cycling, for the past 18 or so months which I have reported for the dangerous condition of Potholes & for over a year all I've got was 'we are looking into it' automated emails.
This road is Langton Ave, Chelmsford & is a prime example of the farce & wasted money by the Councils & Government. Read on & you will see what I mean.
I decided to start taking pictures of this road to make a diary to prove the incompetence of our road maintenance.
These are Pictures I took in July 2012:
Now, these Pot Holes were mainly in the middle of the road & when cars are parked on both sides, it is a bloody nightmare to navigate them. Especially in the wet, snow or dark conditions & made worse when cars try get pass.
At around this time Essex Council announced their new £11 million budget to fix potholes, yeah right we all heard that before….
Wasn't disappointed as by November they were still there but worse:
Yet at the same time I took those they had done the adjoining road West Avenue:
Despite they could've easily continued, tho from what I've seem Langton Ave has been forgotten before when West Ave was resurfaced some years back & probably is why its in such a bad condition.
After a week from taking previous pictures, they finally decide to do Langton Ave, but decided to cut corners & made an absolute mess of it... They just filled it with gravel, no packing it down, no sealing it. No! Just filled it with gravel & nothing like the work done the week before in adjoining road!! How bloody stupid is that?
And as you can see the gravel is coming out from the passing of traffic, so it wont be no surprise that in less than a month it looks like this:
And today it now looks no different than 6 months ago:
Oh & now we have this mess to contend with on our bicycles & prime example of why we don't cycle right next to the kerb...
So now you can see the farce on this one road, there are many others like it in Essex & the rest of the country no doubt about that. But I can't check every one of them, so if you have a road near you then do the same as I've just done. Reporting isn't enough, post a blog of it online & make it publicly available for all to see & show a bigger picture of what is really going on!!
Now I've explained my complaint of the sheer waste of money on man hours & material for NOT doing the job properly, would the Government depts & Essex Council like to explain why & if the contractor are coming back to do it again FOC? Maybe even Sustrans like to have words as it's part of the National Cycle Network.
January 2013
Following my posting of this blog & posting it on Social Media sites, I didn't get any response from the parties concerned (no surprise). But what I did see it yet another attempt to patch the road's potholes (whether it was a result of my blog or just coincidence, I dunno) & again it's been done badly. Here are some photo's of the work & a video with my commentary words as I cycle in the video. I let you decide if you agree with me on the poor state of affairs on this road.
February 2013
Since January, I've been watching for any further repairs & of course there hasn't been any. But in February on Twitter Essex Chronicle was asking for pics on a piece they were going to do on Pot Holes so I pointed them to this blog as had plenty of pics & video. Next thing I know they wanted to do a piece on me & a photoshoot on the very road I am blogging about. And here is the news piece...
There were some editorial errors in the piece but it with other news piece the paper did that week & following week might have got Essex Council to do something as they've announce an increase in their Pothole maintenance budget (again) but if its like the repairs that have been done & redone in this road, its just more money down the drain...
UPDATE!!
This will be my final update on this blog, its been nearly 2 yrs since I first reported the potholes & still they are a mess and yet I have seen other roads that have developed potholes this year due to the Winter spell & they've been repaired within weeks of reporting. Essex Council obviously feel this road is not worth fixing as it has failed to do it in the time I've been in Chelmsford. But I am moving on now, so I won't be able to keep an eye on the road & hope those who have the same issues will find my blog & videos of help to back their case.
So as a parting gift on this blog, here's a video done this May to show the poor conditions of the road, cycle network & bus route that this road is used for...
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