Snail’s Pace Development.
One of the few beliefs in their own omnipotence that the Romans didn’t hold, was a belief that they could walk on water; thus when they wished to travel from the sand dune known as Great Yarmouth to Acle, then a major port on the watery estuary they knew as ‘Gariensis’, they abandoned their belief that roads should go from ‘a’ to ‘b’ in a straight line, and took a more circular route over dry land…
Thus the route between these two towns curved northwards in an arc through the old Roman towns of Caister and Filby. It wasn’t until 1831, long after the estuary had silted up, and long after the Dutch had drained the resulting marshes, that anyone thought to drive a road in a straight line alongside the railway line between Acle and Great Yarmouth, Roman style, and call the result ‘the Acle straight’. Such eloquence.
It’s a single carriageway road I have to use on an almost daily basis; joining it from any of the marsh roads that rely on it as a main east-west artery is a game of chicken. Out of the enveloping early morning fog loom Scania’s, tractors, frustrated Londoners in high powered cars, coaches headed to the numerous beachside caravan parks, Tesco’s delivery vans, trailers loaded with 30 bales of hay, minibuses full of oil workers heading for the rigs, all of whom have been forced to drive at 50 miles an hour behind the only law abiding pig farmer in Norfolk.
Trying to pull out to the right in between that lot takes nerves of steel. They play kamikaze with each other as they try to gain an extra place before the swing bridge at Yarmouth opens and everything grinds to a halt – assuming it doesn’t grind to a halt as ‘frustrated Londoner’ overtaking ‘coach load of tourists’ meets ‘minibus full of oil workers’ head on – something which seems to happen on an almost daily basis. I’ve only lived here for six months, and already I’ve had to take the northern detour twice because the road was closed, and been trapped in the traffic backlog three times when the road was closed when I was already on it…
See, every time one of these morons hits another moron, it closes the road in both directions, there being a ditch either side of the road so no other way for the emergency services to reach the scene other than air ambulance (Hello, its Prince William again!) or forcing the traffic off one side or ‘tother to allow the Police through.
There is a ditch either side of the road for good reason – to stop the road flooding – it being part of an ancient estuary, if you were paying attention. So, man-made ditch, in order to keep what has become the main road to a major city – Great Yarmouth – open. This being Norfolk, another use was soon found for the ditch – concealing cars (and their drivers) from view when they had slid off the road in the fog into the murky bog water…
You would think that the sensible thing to do would be to dig new ditches further away from the road, fill in the existing ditches, and widen the road to allow the impatient ones to overtake without meeting something big and angular coming the other way? Perhaps even the odd traffic light to give marsh dwellers such as myself a sporting chance of taking their place in the infernal queue to see the parade of mobility scooters in Great Yarmouth – without risking life and limb?
The government must not be allowed to forget how vital dualling the A47 is to Great Yarmouth’s prosperity, according to county councillors – one of whom likened the road to a “cart track in Romania”.
Mr Castle said nothing less than full dualling of the road would prevent deaths and aid the economic prosperity of Great Yarmouth. He said: “It hampers our ability to bring in inward investment. And in terms of injuries, it continues to be a blackspot. All too frequently the A47 is closed to traffic and that’s not good for local businesses.”
That was Councillor Castle, who was incensed to find that the government had committed £300 million to improving the route to Yarmouth – but leaving the lethal ‘Acle straight’ as it is – lethal! Month after month people lose their life on this road, either because of their own stupidity or because they were directly behind someone who thought they could ‘take a chance’.
But, it seems, the loss of human life is nothing; there is another life at stake. Since those ditches were dug, they have filled up with immigrants. An immigrant from Sussex called the Little Whirlpool Ramshorn Snail. The government are so keen on these snails they even have a special form you have to fill in before you disturb their equilibrium by maintaining your dykes.
It’s taken a liking to our Acle dykes. Our man-made dykes beside our relatively recent man-made road. 5mm of inedible aquatic snail ‘with a flattened spiral shell’ that isn’t even facing extinction, is being allowed to take precedence over the loss of human life. The best we have been offered is a three year feasibility study to see if the damned snail might agree to relocate and live with its Sussex or Suffolk brethren. At a cost of millions no doubt.
No wonder they found it necessary to redact the names of all the people involved in this feasibility study.
You couldn’t make it up.
- right_writes
August 21, 2015 at 9:23 am -
Gawd ‘elp us if yon snail decides to convert to Islam!
- Hadleigh Fan
August 21, 2015 at 9:28 am -
The conversion of the M3 to a ‘Smart motorway’ is intended to make it ‘safer’.
Can anyone explain how taking away the hard shoulder makes a motorway ‘safer’? Only to some desk-bound, cycle-riding, fuqwit with a theory, surely.
- Mudplugger
August 21, 2015 at 10:35 am -
It’s nothing whatsoever to do with making it safer, it’s about making it more controllable, with the key benefit of raising loads of revenue.
The new sections of so-called ‘smart’ motorway feature variable speed-limits, accompanied by hosts of cameras, which means that, when revenue is low, they can just tweak the speed-limits and the cash-flow obediently floods in thereafter. And it doesn’t stop there – all those unfortunates being snapped, then find their insurance premiums will rise for the next few years which, coutesy of Gideon Osborne’s last Budget, now attract an even higher level of Insurance Premium Tax, generating a stream of cash for years after: a double-whammy indeed.
And they all though Gordon Brown was the master of stealth taxation !- Hadleigh Fan
August 21, 2015 at 6:21 pm -
Mudplugger, while I agree with almost everything you say, the signs on the motorway claim that they are making the M3 safer, which is my starting point.
- Mudplugger
August 21, 2015 at 8:38 pm -
Tony Blair claimed there were weapons of mass destruction available within 45 minutes – I didn’t believe that either. As a wise man once said, “Believe only half of what you see and none of what you read or hear”.
- Ho Hum
August 21, 2015 at 9:22 pm -
So are you a special case?
- Ho Hum
- Mudplugger
- Hadleigh Fan
- Mudplugger
- The Blocked Dwarf
August 21, 2015 at 9:35 am -
- Ed P
August 21, 2015 at 1:32 pm -
Don’t the elves mind dwarves?
- The Blocked Dwarf
August 21, 2015 at 1:59 pm -
Don’t the elves mind dwarves?
Judging by the inordinate amount of time the Elves of Elveden compelled me to spend involuntarily in their village , I reckon they must be rather fond of dwarves, humans, goblins (Norfolkers), Dutch Lorries, commuters and Carbon Monoxide.
Seriously, the air quality in Elveden most days must have made central Beijing look almost alpine. For once the mutations of a norfolk village may not have been caused solely by interbreeding and I’d hate to have been the village School Master in the days before they took lead out of petrol.
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Ed P
- Hadleigh Fan
August 21, 2015 at 9:36 am -
… and as for bizarre immigrants, what about Crepidula fornicator (the farting fucker, for those not much versed in the dog-Latin of Linnaeus and willing to accept a free translation). This variety of limpet, hailing from North America, decides which sex it will be depending on what the juvenile lands on – if it ends up on a chain of fellows it is male (‘form a circle’) but landing somewhere new to be at the bottom of the heap, it is female. It ends up in chains of sometimes as many as 10 individuals, reproducing in a sort of perpetual gang-bang, and all without the aid of social media, dogging sites, or Ashley Madison.
- Fredbear
August 21, 2015 at 9:42 am -
The feasibility study will no doubt discover not only that the sweet little snail deserves to have its habitat preserved, but also that the road should be closed so that said snail can visit its brethren in the other ditch, thereby preserving its joyous existence for may years to come.
- The Blocked Dwarf
August 21, 2015 at 10:11 am -
Wal Cons’able, OI los’ con’rol f moi Massey Ferguson and tha’ landed in thur di’ch spillin’ thur lood f copper based super s’rength mollusc poison, tha OI was gorn ‘o use ‘o clean moi ba’h, everywhere. OI weep for thur pore li’tle doddermans…
[Well Constable, I lost control of my Massey Ferguson and it landed in the ditch spilling the load of copper based super strength mollusc poison, that I was going to use to clean my bath, everywhere. I weep for the poor little snails…]
- Alex
August 21, 2015 at 10:17 am -
I have no idea why these “animal lovers” are able to exert such undue influence over those in power. The powers that be, seem utterly beguiled by the bearded, sandal wearing, grow their own socks, Guardian reading, bicycle riding, tree hugging brigade. I’m sure it’s not me, the world really has gone mad (Hawkwind reference for those who look for these things).
- Engineer
August 21, 2015 at 10:31 am -
Ah – the Green Blob strikes again. Their tentacles are everywhere. They’re like the education Marxists – gradually developing a stranglehold on Quangos, environmental and conservation charities and pressure groups. Remember the Somerset Levels flooding? Happened because the Green Blob siezed control of the Environment Agency, and spent the money it should have spent dredging the rivers and maintaining sluices on a super-duper nature reserve instead. Winter flooding got worse year by year, the locals’ protests got steadily louder, but nobody listened until lives and businesses were placed under very serious threat by prolonged heavy rain and the floods resulting from the degraded infrastructure reaching a point of being incapable of dealing with it. They are the people who will defend badgers tooth and nail despite their not being in the least endangered, steadily rising problems with bovine TB, and vastly diminished hedgehog numbers. These are the people who would ‘rewild’ large tracts of agricultural land, despite a rising population needing to be fed. These are the people who demand ‘sustainable’ power generation sources such as windfarms, despite their being demonstrably useless and expensive ways of generating not much electricity. These are the people who would vilify anybody who calls them out – Owen Paterson, the best environment minister the country has had in decades, was summarily sacked by the Camoron because he dared to defy them.
Concern for the environment is good and right, but a balance needs to be kept. At the moment, the ‘environmentalists’ are going too far. They need to be curbed, or we’ll all suffer.
- Mudplugger
August 21, 2015 at 10:43 am -
You’re absolutely right. However, there is a glint of sense emerging from the Eton Mess of Government in the person of Amber Rudd, the current Energy & Climate Change Minister – at the moment, I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt, as she appears to be saying some sensible things, although whether she is allowed to carry them through remains to be seen.
On the Somerset Levels, I suspect that it wasn’t so much the lives and businesses being under threat which stimulated action, but rather the votes in jeopardy – there’s nothing like the proximity of an election to stir the sleeping beast.
- Engineer
August 21, 2015 at 6:04 pm -
I’ll reserve judgement on Rudd. She’s said some sensible things about subsidies to on-shore windfarms and solar power, but allowed that ridiculous tidal barrage in the Severn estuary to go ahead. That’ll be a very expensive joke; it’ll silt up in less than a decade, and building it will cause far more environmental degredation than the amount of elctrickery it’ll produce warrants. Unless that’s the plan – let the Greenies have a small one to prove how useless they’d be before allowing them to do something really daft like barrage the whole estuary.
- Engineer
- binao
August 21, 2015 at 12:38 pm -
Problem is that at every boring consultation meeting, transport, mineral extraction, oil, whatever, the corduroys & bicycle clipped tofu nibblers attend.
They seek to influence anything which affects transport or the environment- most us us lose the will to live after the first few pages of what official bodies call consultation. They’re oblivious to the fact that septuagenerians & above aren’t likely to switch to ‘sustainable transport’, i.e. bicycles or foot. - Cascadian
August 21, 2015 at 3:52 pm -
“They’re like the education Marxists – gradually developing a stranglehold on Quangos, environmental and conservation charities and pressure groups”………indeed, but the crop of university graduates thoroughly immersed in right on teaching and avoidance of mathematics or economics have to be employed somewhere, they are useless to industry so a government job it must be. The camoron is the best example available, totally useless in the real world.
Perhaps the landlady should invest in a (detestable) JetSki, ideal for Norfolk I would have thought.- The Blocked Dwarf
August 21, 2015 at 4:02 pm -
Perhaps the landlady should invest in a (detestable) JetSki, ideal for Norfolk I would have thought.
Don’t give her ideas! She has already informed us that her tiny Fiat Fiasco tops out at 110 mph between Lower Catwee and Colostomy Bag Magna….
Next thing we know there will be one of those cajun red neck hoover-swamp bateau things parked outside the Raccoon Arms …festooned with gator teeth and NHS replacement molars from her escapades into the Fens.
-
- The Blocked Dwarf
August 21, 2015 at 4:50 pm -
PAWS 2 ..coming to a country pub near you….
- Engineer
August 21, 2015 at 6:07 pm -
Wasn’t there a recent case of a Raccoon hitching a lift on an alligator? That might be the answer.
Costlier to feed than a dog, though. Finding a vet to give it it’s annual check-up might be a challenge, too.
- The Blocked Dwarf
-
- binao
August 21, 2015 at 7:44 pm -
Odd thing Cascadian, despite the unrelenting influence of the left in education, green stuff, charity administration, local government officers, the BBC, whatever, more than half the population learns from experience of the real world and says: ‘up yours, there’s a better way’.
I wonder why?- Cascadian
August 21, 2015 at 9:55 pm -
despitebecause of the unrelenting influence of the left in education,……….. more than half the population learns from experience of the real world.There I corrected your statement, even though I am in complete agreement with you.
No need to wonder-universities across the world are just socialist infested sinkholes of good money chasing bad results. Defunding of 66% of them and transfering the funds to nuclear power generation and infrastructure renewal (as in a high-speed water highway for the landladys jetski/swampboat) could create numerous worthwhile jobs and solve a lot of perceived social ills that the universities dream-up. As a side benefit the totally useless PPE degree would be flushed into the sewer wher it belongs.
- binao
August 22, 2015 at 8:23 am -
For me the most constant reminder, usually courtesy of the BBC of course, is Owen Jones. What a waste of an education & airtime.
- binao
- Cascadian
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Mudplugger
- Robert Edwards
August 21, 2015 at 10:36 am -
An old NIMBY trick is to introduce a rare breed of spider/bat/orchid/dung beetle/toad/whatever to a new habitat and get the bobble-hatted rentamob to turn out with placards. Were I the frustrated agent of change, I’d counter that opener with the long-thought-extinct British mamba gambit; five years later – nah! False alarm – soreee!
The reverse must also work. What, pray, is the main predator of the LWRS? Easy, I’d have thought; they are probably the staple diet of Romanian pikeys…
- Joe Public
August 21, 2015 at 10:42 am -
One of the joys of the crawl along the Acle Straight into Gt Yarmouth is watching the North Sea windmills to the left.
During dozens of trips along that road, it never ceased to amaze me how few were actually generating power. Rarely was every visible turbine harvesting the subsidies.
Although Anna didn’t mention it, more than one of the speeding morons will probably have been a foreigner* attempting to make up time having previously set up their satnav for ‘Yarmouth’, and realising only as they boarded the ferry that that ‘Yarmouth’ was the one on the I0W.
[*Norfolkese for someone not of the county]
- Mudplugger
August 21, 2015 at 11:05 am -
Sat-Nav is brilliant technology, but the problem lies with its brain-dead users.
I live at the end of a 300yd long private cul-de-sac, guarded at its entrance by 8ft high stone gateposts clearly bearing the legend ‘Private Drive’ – at least twice a day, I am visited by hard-of-thinking delivery drivers and others seeking one particular street, who blindly obey their Sad-Nav when it tells them to “take the next left”, regardless of the signage and obvious nature of the narrow, tree-lined roadway.
Needless to say, I don’t make turning round easy for them, watching like a hawk to ensure that no cars, walls, fences, verges, trees or shrubs are compromised by them as they attempt a 12-point turn to achieve their retreat – it’s fun to watch at times, in an evil-hearted sort of way.- Fredbear
August 21, 2015 at 3:08 pm -
Do you sell tickets ?
- Mudplugger
August 21, 2015 at 8:42 pm -
Probably counts as a blood-sport, so they’d not let me – great idea though.
- Mudplugger
- Fredbear
- Mudplugger
- woodsy42
August 21, 2015 at 10:55 am -
Or they could simply leave the ditches where they are, use the existing road as one carriageway, and build a second carriageway with a new third ditch alongside. This would achieve the the road improvements without a single snail being displaced and provide new snail housing for the forseeable future. Problem solving is so difficult for planners isn’t it!
- Moor Larkin
August 21, 2015 at 11:12 am -
They’re working on a tunnel, like at Stonehenge.
Nobody weeps for the earthworm.
https://youtu.be/D35JhgKgO_8 - Engineer
August 21, 2015 at 11:19 am -
…..and if they incorporated some pipes or culverts under the new carriageway at regular intervals, the snails could visit their mates on the other side of the road without risking a good squashing. It would also alleviate flooding risk by balancing water levels on both sides. Two birds killed with one stone (if that’s not a politically incorrect phrase, these days).
- binao
August 22, 2015 at 8:38 am -
The A283 just north of Steyning has two culverts for toads. When the toads migrate, or whatever it is that drives them to mass movement, locals helpers put up little fences to herd the toads into the culverts.
This was not a new road; I recall seeing the culverts built, in the late ’80’s I think, around the time I moved to W. Sussex.
I guess road safety and hundreds of squished toads on one of the most dangerous roads in the county……
- binao
- Joe Public
August 21, 2015 at 12:11 pm -
For the amount of use the adjacent railway line gets, perhaps that should be converted to the second carriageway????
- The Blocked Dwarf
August 21, 2015 at 12:21 pm -
All this talk of second carriageways…is about 20 years too late. Do the planners really think anyone is going to give up their car or force their kids to use Public Transport to get to Uni? Will ‘Busy Working Mums’ suddenly start walking Jessica and Joplin to school of a morning before taking a Segway to work? Every A road in the country needs to be 3 lanes each side (and every Motorway 4 or 5).
Add in shore to shore 4G coverage, repeal the Smoking Ban and Britain might just be attractive to foreign investors and not just to foreigners on the 02:00 Scania from Calais.
- Mudplugger
August 21, 2015 at 4:38 pm -
And maybe repeal the current UK ban on the use of a Segway on anything other than wholly private land – can’t use them in any public area – not that I want to, but they’d be no more dangerous than the terminally brain-dead, untrained, fat-chavs you currently encounter (and try to dodge) on their mobility scooters, as they cast off the greasy wrappers from their latest junk-food take-away in passing.
- Mudplugger
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Moor Larkin
- ivan
August 21, 2015 at 11:29 am -
But Anna it was always thus.
Dredging up memories from the very early 60s of trying to dodge the Massey Ferguson tractors towing converted horse carts while driving an old Vauxhall car that I rescued from the local gravel pit – the guy that owned it missed a turn one night and ended up down there and just walked away. The usual reason for the dash was to either get from the Yarmouth council planning offices to the Flegg council planning offices or the other way round.
It was also fun if one of the farmers decided to move the cows from one marsh to another although that tended to happen near the ends of the road. .
- Moor Larkin
August 21, 2015 at 11:32 am -
I have very fond memories of summer holidays spent on “the Exeter Bypass”.
I would pass the time speculating upon how awful the traffic in Exeter itself must have been.
- Moor Larkin
- Little Chef
August 21, 2015 at 11:59 am -
Apparently the snails taste very nice poached in garlic with a hint of freshly squeezed lemon accompanied by a nice bottle of red of your choice.Problem solved they could be eaten out of existence.
- The Blocked Dwarf
August 21, 2015 at 12:05 pm -
Ahh yes the ‘Delia’ Attack Plan. Some Acle foodie needs to ring Heston…or Hugh Roadkill Eatitsall..
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Ed P
August 21, 2015 at 1:37 pm -
- Mudplugger
August 21, 2015 at 4:38 pm -
It will if Chilcott’s running it.
- Engineer
August 21, 2015 at 5:53 pm -
The newts and snails would be given the right to reply….
- Engineer
- Mudplugger
- ramtops
August 21, 2015 at 1:39 pm -
Many years ago, I lived in Acle and worked in Great Yarmouth. Horrible, horrible journey, with those dips in the road where idiots thought it would be safe to overtake. Many times I found myself wondering if I’d passed the windmill or not, it was so easy to lose concentration.
I thought it was built on sleepers over the marshland, so expensive to dual, but really – the time has come long ago.
- The Blocked Dwarf
August 21, 2015 at 2:04 pm -
I lived in Acle and worked in Great Yarmouth. Horrible
You could have ended your post there. Right there.
To my certain knowledge there is nothing much ‘non horrible’ about Yarmouth (since they got rid of the fake Tyrolean Bier Hall on the pier anyway) and the Wild West fort on the prom.
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Ho Hum
August 21, 2015 at 1:54 pm -
Isn’t it just another cunning plan to institute some form of pre-emptive local overpopulation control, a sort of Norfolk Car Pathway?
- The Blocked Dwarf
August 21, 2015 at 3:20 pm -
pre-emptive local overpopulation control, a sort of Norfolk Car Pathway
Considering the sort of drivers Norfolk has, it may , on 2nd thoughts I feel, not be such a bad suggestion…
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b116/horta/imageedit_3_9685249697_zpsf1vd6kiz.jpg
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Peter MacFarlane
August 21, 2015 at 3:43 pm -
One is reminded of the French official, who, asked about the speed with which they’d been able to construct the railway to the Channel Tunnel, sneered that “when we decide to drain a swamp, we do not consult the frogs”.
I’ve never been able to decide whether he meant actual frogs, or was referring to his fellow-countrymen in a derogatory way, but the point is, they just get on and do it.
How did we get into the situation where insignificant wildlife always takes precedence over human affairs?
And don’t get me started on the ruination of so many lovely church buildings by sodding bats…
- Gloria Smudd
August 21, 2015 at 10:31 pm -
You lot in Norfolk don’t know you are born! Try living near the “new-and-improved” Black Cat Roundabout on the A1! The planners responsible for the recent £5.6m ‘improvement’ which installed the only traffic lights back on the A1 should, in my opinion, be pushed into a Norfolk dyke. It’s a shambles and the queues north/south & east/west are – AFTER THE ‘IMPROVEMENTS’ – at least a mile tailback in every direction from about 3pm onwards. No doubt the “uber-roundabout-traffic-light-configuration” is a success on paper somewhere deep within the Highway Agency’s statistics but in terms of traffic-flow for even local drivers , it’s a daily disaster. Luckily I know a few backroad rat-runs if I need to get from A (in Cambridgeshire) to B (in Bedfordshire) without going anywhere near this humdinger of an expensive failure. Good luck getting the Norfolk stretch of the A47 made safe & efficient… I hope for your sakes that the professionals responsible for vetoing some flyovers and feed-in lanes linking the A1 and the A421 bypass to Cambridge won’t be working on your road system.
- Cascadian
August 21, 2015 at 11:06 pm -
Might we assume that the traffic lights were installed to allow snails to cross the carriageway safely?
- Cascadian
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