It’s a road repairs time in the Forest, with infuriating but no doubt necessary road works taking place at many strategic parts of the Forest road complex.

The most egregious of these is the disconnection of the village of Whitecroft from the travelling public, who have to negotiate little used minor roads on the way from the central Forest to Lydney. This apparent road improvement project has been going on for ages, and the residents of the small sleepy settlement of Brockhollands must be getting somewhat irritated by the enormous number of vehicles (including my own) passing through on this unofficial Whitecroft bypass. Another option for frustrated motorists is via Yorkley, which is more of a detour but offers wider roads.

In Lydbrook, there is an Interesting but infuriating danger to free running traffic, where a collapsed wall seems to have caused a danger to the travelling public. There are temporary traffic lights, only one side of the road in use – when you emerge from the traffic-lit area, if there is a parked vehicle on your side of the road when you emerge, then you will have to move to the other side of the road. But if the other side of the road is already occupied by a string of vehicles waiting to enter the traffic lit area, towards you, you will have to wait. But while you are waiting, traffic following you is stretching back to the traffic lit road, so there is nowhere for traffic travelling towards you to go, and you have a complete deadlock.

I’m not sure if this situation has yet arisen, but if it has, it will have created an interesting but highly inconvenient delay to the travelling public. It seems to be taking an inordinately long time to fix this problem, and It’s one of a series of road works that have delayed motorists on this B4234 recently.

If you follow the B4226 (Broadwell to Cinderford road) to the Cinderford turn off (at a clearly old industrial area known as Steam Mills and Nailbridge) you may face a series of challenges on the way to Cinderford, with apparently random areas of road works on your way there. The good nature of Forest motorists, is demonstrated in a polite ‘after you’ or ‘no, after you’ to drivers in the opposite direction in the face of irritating road works along this stretch of road.

The confusing nature of the signage on the major roads of the in the inner Forest were recently displayed in contradictory signs on the B4226 (Ruspidge/Cinderford road to Broadwell via the Speech House) and the A4136 (Steam Mills to Berry Hill) roads.

It would be foolish to criticise the improvement and repair of Forest roads and the display of any necessary signage, but work should be co-ordinated and signage must be accurate. And please fix that collapsed wall in Lydbrook.