Potholes

Bouncy, bouncy. Well there's a limit to how rough you want it. When it becomes thud, grind, wobble, things are getting dangerous. Most of the roads on my commute are suffering after the winter and a number of potholes have appeared, especially around previous repairs and works.

I've taken advantage of the excellent CTC pothole reporting service at www.fillthathole.org.uk to report them to the authority responsible for upkeep of the roads.

You can't fault the council (or is it coincidence?) Since I reported some last week, many of the faults have been marked with paint and today some of them got filled in.

I think there is still a wide margin between what the roads department consider worth filling in and those that affect cyclists quite seriously.

Some of bits of road where it has been 'made good' after works, throw me out of the saddle because they stick up too much. Others problems are where there are a series of relatively small holes where other hazards exist, such as at a junction. It's difficult to steer around the problem without putting myself in danger. Linear repairs running along the road can be problematic too. The original road would have been cut with a stone cutting wheel and if the repair afterwards is at a different level or worn away, steering along the cut can catch the wheel and throw a cyclist off balance.

One suggestion might be to ride a bike with big balloon tyres. Those would soak up the bumps. I don't really want to do that and would prefer a reasonable surface to use thinner tyres on. Hopefully the council are proud to have better roads and accept fault reports gladly.