Sally Mair - Loving life

By Sallymair

Sunday morning!

Thank you for the smiles for my lovely yellow flowers yesterday, They're so cheerful.
No church for me today as I've no wish to either spread my bugs or disturb others. I had a lazy morning instead.
We live on the route of the cycle race next Sunday. One good outcome is that the Telford Road junction with the Queensferry Road is finally being repaired. The potholes here have been bad for a couple of years now, it's just as the traffic speeds up to 40 mph and I've been terrified some cyclist would come to grief.
The seams between lanes on the three main carriageways have broken up and had long deep gaps between them which are almost more dangerous to cyclists than the tram lines are, as they are in the centre of the road and unavoidable. In wet conditions they become invisible. My daughter and son in law who cycle there regularly have both had close shaves.
Now though, it is being repaired over the course of ten nights, hooray. They couldn't have had top class international competitors competing on such a surface. Today too, I noticed a street sweeper lorry outside and thought again that a much needed job had been done. The road and pavements have so much loose grit on them. I went out to take a look and admire the clean road and was quite horrified that it could be called a completed job. The top left picture shows how the mud has been spread the length of the gutter and a new additional line of mud created alongside it. The picture to the right shows the other side of the road next to the pedestrian crossing. Here they have used a smaller, pavement sized vehicle. The curve is the extent of its brushes ability to move forward as the pavement is too narrow due to the pole of the pedestrian crossing light. The lower left picture shows the mess which has built up here against the wall at the edge of the pavement. As this is a pedestrian crossing people stand here with buggies and wheelchairs as well as children and dogs. We try to stand back from the road edge as the traffic is fast and there are pot holes, which, when it is raining fill with muddy water and lose stones and are then splashed all over us as we wait. We've been reporting the mess for a very long period and keep being told it's not a danger so not urgent. Looking at the work done, It's hard to believe that someone whose job is to clear away the mess, could approach the pile from one direction only and not then go past and turn back to clear it from the other direction.
I feel like a right moan this evening, sorry, but it's so infuriating when work isn't done properly.
At least three of us have passed info on to our local councillor who is very effective. Hopefully the job will be done again, properly this time, it's clear nobody is doing any sort of quality control.

Here is some info about the race
https://www.cyclingworldchamps.com/schedule/road-men-elite-road-race/

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