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news
Tour of Britain (CC BY-ND 2.0 licensed by Stuart Richards:Flickr)Gloucestershire races to fix roads for Tour of Britain
Highway repair crews in Gloucestershire are in a race against time to get the roads up to top quality before the Tour of Britain arrives next Wednesday.
Gloucestershire Highways plans to repair 35 roads that will be used in stage four of the race.
The Gloucestershire Echo reports that Highways says the surfaces have been approved by race organisers and are maintained to the national safety standard, but it wants to go the extra mile to ensure a smooth ride for stars like Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish.
County councillor Vernon Smith, cabinet member for highways, said: “The highways team have taken great pride in ensuring Gloucestershire roads are safe for riders.
“We are really looking forward to welcoming the cyclists to the county. We hope that major events like this will visit Gloucestershire again and that residents and visitors will continue to choose cycling as a form of leisure and transport within our beautiful county.”
John Rowland, who runs Cheltenham Cycles, welcomed the repairs work.
He said: “It’s better for cyclists and motorists to have a good road surface.
“Sometimes you can avoid a pothole but other times even an experienced rider like me has to ride into one. You don’t like doing it, but it’s better than going under the wheels of a car.
“Also it’ll make Gloucestershire look better. It’ll be better to see Cheltenham with good roads for the coverage.
“Seeing someone like Bradley Wiggins come off and break a collar-bone on live TV won’t do anyone any good.”
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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17 comments
Well I drove to work today for a change and took a slight diversion, nothing has been done on Cleeve and Winchcombe nothing there either, I guess it could be worse, the broken bricks might make a few feel at home, give it that pave light experience....
Oh and there is one small sign on Winchcombe highstreet warning of potential delays.
A race against time? If only they'd known that the route was coming through the area months ago! Oh.
There will be points for those the categorised climbs.
If there were points for every lump (but not at the finish) that would weight the competition too far in favour of the break. The Valley Road climb is probably the only climb on which the points will go to the rider who ascends it the quickest.
The route goes through the centre of Winchcombe, where the road is in a horrendous state; I hope that receives some attention.
But if the council are too busy smoothing things out for the ToB they'll probably take even longer to get round to my personal top priority, which is the dreadful Hyde Lane out of Swindon Village.
Local council willing to spend cash when high profile sporting event rolls through for a couple of hours but not willing to protect vulnerable road users who have to negotiate poor surfacing day in day out?
I have lived in quite a few different towns & cities in England and currently live in Cheltenham. Cyclists are far better provided for here than any other place I have lived in.
I don't find that the state of the roads is too bad and there are so many traffic free paths to use anyway.
Although, as the route passes my house, I should see the benefit of some of the resurfacing work.
I guess they won't fix the roads in both directions though, having looked at the route, i am hoping they do something about Cleeve hill as the decent has been getting progressively worse* on the Cheltenham side for years, i am guessing fixing the winchcombe side won't happen?
* getting dangerous at times, big pot holes, subsidence just minor issues, if your in a car, but on a bike!
Cleeve was in my mind as I read this. It's like the moon. The moon with gravity obviously. And impatient drivers.
Given that the peloton will be using both sides of the road, I would hope they're not just going to fix the left-hand lane in the direction of travel!
tell that to Glos CC....
To be honest i am surprised the number of repairs is so low.
As an aside, anyone know why stage 4 has 6 climbs but only 3 categorised? and the categorisation where the finish "climb" is rated the same as the wyche at 2 but Snowshill is 3 and both Cleeve, Leckhampton, Stroud are not classified?
I think where the climb occurs on the route has an effect on the categorisation. So a climb towards the end when the riders are tired will be rated harder than if it had been at the beginning.
Cleeve and Leckhampton are both long, tough drags but possibly not quite as steep as Snowshill?
This is what i find confusing, Wyche happens right at the beginning, which seems to me a bit early to do anything, Snowshill IMO isn't that bad a climb, cleeve is definitely a long drag, Leckhampton is harder than Snowshill, and, i think, longer, particularly if you consider they go all the way past the air balloon to the very top.
Only thing i did wonder, Worcestershire seem to be pushing the race far more, have they paid the organisers money?? whereas Gloucestershire seem to be, for a better word, ignorring it. I can't remember seeing many road closed signs when i was out yesterday. Which involved going up snowshill, (there are signs) then back to Winchcombe where i can't remember seeing any????
The route takes one of the flatter roads out of Stroud, along the Nailsworth valley and then up through Horsley, 3rd cat on Strava but really more a long drag than a hill. What interests me more is what will happen below Horsley, there have been traffic lights here for ages as half the road is gently subsiding into the valley. I'd be more than happy to see this repaired!
Which on the basis of the number of months the A46 out of Painswick was shut and the time it took to repair the A46 out of Brockworth, both sections that also subsided, they won't have it repaired by Wednesday!
Ace ! As a Stroud resident, I welcome this whole-heartedly. 35 roads - that is a LOT. Some of our roads have not been fixed for several years. Pity they are not going down the road where a pothole got me 2 weeks ago ... new helmet purchased and jersey in for repair.
"the road where a pothole got me 2 weeks ago"
Hope you reported it - fillthathole.org.uk !
You lost me for a second when the headline said 'Tour de France'...