Drivers in the Rain
I came down the M6 in heavy rain from Manchester.
It wouldn’t have been my preferred route, but on leaving the Trafford Centre, I lost the signs sending me eastwards on the M60 and hence over Snake Pass, which is an ideal road for a Lotus Elan. It used to be on my route to Liverpool University from where I lived with my parents in Felixstowe. Today that seems strange, but remember in 1965, there was no M6 from the M1 to Stafford and no M62, so you had to go round the major traffic jam that was the Midlands.
Yesterday, the traffic was heavy on the M6 and I drove most of the way sensibly in the middle lane on the legal limit for most of the way.
What got me was the number of 4x4s that were driving at perhaps ninety in the outside lane. The Lotus was handling the conditions well, but a 4×4 handles several times worse and I would not have felt safe at that sort of speed in such a vehicle. Perhaps they feel safe with all metal around them.
But no wonder why there are so many accidents. In fact, it was more by luck than judgement that I didn’t meet any, as several motorways were closed.
But you need some luck sometimes and I got home safely just before seven.
Dualling the A11
More on the local news about the costs and lack of dualling of the last piece of the A11 between London and Norwich. It’s about time it was done, but then East Anglia is very much on this dreadful not-do-anything-for-them list, as we don’t have too many Labour MPs and virtually no councillors.
I drove up to the Norfolk coast yesterday and because it was Thursday, the traffic was not too great. But try doing that journey in the rush hour or at the weekend!
Norwich needs to be connected by dual carriageway roads to Ipswich, Yarmouth, Peterborough and Newmarket. On current progress, only Newmarket will ever be done and probably in about 2020. If this was Scotland or the North of England, it would have been done years ago.
If I was to talk about trains, I could add that East Anglia gets everybody else’s cast off rolling stock. But they do work pretty well, despite what you read in the papers. Let’s have a decent Cambridge-Ipswich service.
The Anonymous Widower 