Access Road Maintenance 2011 - Hopes & Dreams

I've noticed a big deterioration in our private access road from the EA depot to Wall Street since the weather has deteriorated in October.

Regular readers of the blog already know this year Andy Haynes and I did our best to voluntarily improve it for all residents and households during the summer using our own funds and manpower as the owners of the road had not bothered to maintain it and maintain our access rights. Thankfully our desperation fuelled work earlier in the year has remained intrinsically sound and unaffected by the wet weather. Hopefully residents driving over it will notice that all the hardcore re-inforced areas we filled in the summer have remained level - proving that it was a sensible decision.

The remainder of the rough-track road that we did not work on covered with a fine gravel covering has once more moved around dramatically with the wet weather and late summer vehicular movement - producing large pot-holes and bumps which have started to re-appear throughout the 1.6 km making it tougher to get a normal car down once more.

By spring these areas will have deteriorated further - in 2011 I'll be contributing another £180 towards another 20 ton load of hardcore - which is what I provided last year in addition to the 70 tons Andy and his mother paid for.

I've been thinking about some of the previous negative attitudes towards the work by a couple of individuals, and I think a good compromise would be to make the entry point of the road look intentionally uneven to put off car-based explorers and the "boy-racer" fraternity which they cited as the main reasons for not improving the surface. If we improve 95% of the road past that point we can move up and down more easily and still maintain the feeling of isolation we adore!

Given all the positive encouragement we had last year from all the other residents, hopefully this year given our new spirit of community cooperation we'll be able to rally support and get some more help both financially and physically to improve it further!