A Word In Your Ear - August 17, 2017

Busy skies mean busy roads
Roy EdmondsRoy Edmonds
Roy Edmonds

Where were you for this year’s spectacular Blackpool Air Show?

To remind you, it was last weekend over two glorious days of mid-August sunshine, yes two whole hot days on the trot!

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

You might have been getting the full panorama and enjoying a sea breeze along our holiday coastline, or munching an ice-cream and resting from the dinosaurs at Stanley Park; then again, you could have been craning your neck from the car, in a traffic jam. We were at Blackpool Cricket Club watching the First 11 beat Preston, then marvelling at daring aeronautics and a low final flypast by the stunning Red Arrows.

Of course, they were back wowing the holiday throngs on Sunday when, while we played tennis at Lytham Sports Club, they flew over and entertained us once again.

However, on the ground, round the Fylde’s roads, it was a different story - of gridlock.

Why is it, I wonder, that councils appear to carry out most roadworks in the peak of the holiday season, when there are hundreds of extra cars on our already busy highways?

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

United Utilities, too, appear to be intent on digging ever deeper holes at most of our busier road intersections, then running in more pipework beside the new housing estates popping up all over the place.

The Prom was a no-go area; Queensway was ‘chocker’ (as old fliers used to say).

Even when we tried the country lanes – usually like a Grand Prix circuit – round Ballam, there were rows of brake lights twinkling for miles ahead.

Nearer home, eventually, Whitegate Drive was solid with traffic as drivers from out of town got stuck in wrong lanes and, later, stopped again by all those temporary lights.

Yes, the air show was great; a tribute to this wonderful coast.

But on the ground it’s chaos.

We’ll just have to get a helicopter, I suppose.

• For Roy’s books visit royedmonds-blackpool.com.