Cornwall is loose

[Hroth]

2 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Topic drift alert! Widecombe is in Devon.

 

Completely on topic, Cornwall is on the loose...

 

Muahahahahaaaa!!!!  🤣

[Steamport Southport]

4 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Topic drift alert! Widecombe is in Devon.

 

Is he back there? Didn't he say he went to school and there was only something like three kids in the entire school!

 

 

[Hroth]

5 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Is he back there? Didn't he say he went to school and there was only something like three kids in the entire school!

 

 

 

He definitely said something about that on QI, but that's not to be trusted...

 

 

 

[Steamport Southport]

Yep. The amount of things they get wrong on QI that I know are wrong makes me think most of the rest must be wrong as well.

 

[The Lurker]

On 09/05/2023 at 11:04, woodenhead said:

This sounds like politics 🤣

levelling up

[Siberian Snooper]

10 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Topic drift alert! Widecombe is in Devon.

 

It's good to know that it's still in the right place.

 

 

[jjb1970]

I am proud of RMWeb that nobody has asked about where we queue up to help give it a push, well done! 

 

PS. does anyone know where, just asking for someone else.

[Hroth]

 

I just thought, if the entire population of the county took just one dose of Loperamide?

 

Thinking aloud, you understand,..

 

 

[Siberian Snooper]

On 13/05/2023 at 04:05, jjb1970 said:

I am proud of RMWeb that nobody has asked about where we queue up to help give it a push, well done! 

 

PS. does anyone know where, just asking for someone else.

 

Devils Point, Stonehouse would seem to be the obvious choice. 

[The Johnster]

Being Welsh, I find my Brythonic pov more in alignment with it being England that is loose; where should I queue to help push it back to Germany…

[jcredfer]

1 hour ago, The Johnster said:

Being Welsh, I find my Brythonic pov more in alignment with it being England that is loose; where should I queue to help push it back to Germany…

 

One might just observe that Wales, without having a similar separation line, would travel to Germany, with England, too...   🙈 

 

You might start to dig free now...  and you should be free by the time we re-collide with the Canadian Shield.....   👴

[Jeremy Cumberland]

If you stand on one of the Chepstow bridges with a crowbar, there's already a useful crack running quite a way up the border, that you might be able to lengthen up to the River Dee, but you'll probably lose Monmouth if you're not careful (and gain a large chunk of Herefordshire).

 

However, conservation of momentum counts against you. England is far heavier than Wales, even with all your mountains, and it will be even worse if no one has thought to detach Scotland first. So you'll not move England towards Germany so much as move Wales towards Ireland. What you really need is someone in Holland pulling England with a rope, and you can work your northwards along the border with an axe or crowbar so that Wales doesn't get pulled too.

[The Johnster]

Good to see that you are all taking this seriously!  Geologically, Cornwall is separate, along with Dartmoor, as is Wales including an incursion into England as far as The Wrekin and arguably Clee Hill and the Malverns.  

[tomparryharry]

Owing to financial strictures, it appears the the Welsh government are considering re-introducing a charge over the crossing....

 

Dartmouth Crossing....

[TheQ]

The descriptions of Cornwall, with tourists, holiday homes , and second homers, is a good description of Norfolk. Many villages in and around Wells have over 50% second homes, this is spreading along the coast, the busiest traffic is a Friday evening as all the foreigners come up for the weekend.

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

However, conservation of momentum counts against you. England is far heavier than Wales, even with all your mountains, and it will be even worse if no one has thought to detach Scotland first.

Don't worry about that, the Scots have already thought of it.

[The Johnster]

I think it's probably true of any area in England or Wales with rural pretentions away from industry and conurbations; Devon, Hampshire, Sussex, Shropshire, the Cotswolds, and certainly anywhere within shouting of a National Park or an undeveloped coast.  Scotland is a little different, a much greater area of wilderness to accommodate secondhomers, and much less developed road network to the more remote spots.  And of course the weather is worse and nobody likes midges.

 

In Wales and Cornwall, it is a factor in the rise of nationalist/separatist politics (such as the idiot Welsh fringe element Meibion Glyndwr (come home to a real fire, buy a cottage in Wales) in the 80s and 90s, and it has alway rather surprised me that this is not true in the same way of places like the Lake District or Yorkshire Dales where younger people have no chance of a foot on the housing ladder in their home areas and must, surely, resent the fact.  ISTR there have been some 'incidents' in Cornwall.  English unity is stronger than I expect it to be! 

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, tomparryharry said:

Owing to financial strictures, it appears the the Welsh government are considering re-introducing a charge over the crossing....

 

Dartmouth Crossing....

The toll for the Severn Bridge (the M48, then called the M4) was the only price I remember actually going down in consequence of the 1971 decimalisation of the currency.  It had been half a crown but went down to 12p because the bridge operators couldn;t be bothered with all the faff of accepting new halfpence.  They couldn't put it up without an Act of Parliament, so it had to come down.  In later years of course they got the necessary legisation and the toll was repeatedly raised, eventually reaching £5.60 per trip charged in the westbound direction only (more for big lorries etc) until the tolls were scrapped five years ago

[jcredfer]

13 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Don't worry about that, the Scots have already thought of it.

 

Oxymoron comes to mind, given the support they have.  🙃

 

 

[MJI]

1 hour ago, Michael Hodgson said:

The toll for the Severn Bridge (the M48, then called the M4) was the only price I remember actually going down in consequence of the 1971 decimalisation of the currency.  It had been half a crown but went down to 12p because the bridge operators couldn;t be bothered with all the faff of accepting new halfpence.  They couldn't put it up without an Act of Parliament, so it had to come down.  In later years of course they got the necessary legisation and the toll was repeatedly raised, eventually reaching £5.60 per trip charged in the westbound direction only (more for big lorries etc) until the tolls were scrapped five years ago

Only been overot once and that was a stupid idea.

 

Been in the tunnel a lot more.

 

I do remember beating some bridge obsessives to chepstow.

[The Johnster]

Went out along the footpath one very calm and lovely summer evening to take photos, a worthwhile expedition if you've the time and inclination.  Park up at Aust Services and the footpath crosses the road on a footbridge and is on the downstream side of the bridge, ideal at times when the tide is in full flood or ebb as the currents and whirlpools are fascinating.  Even on a flat calm evening, though, the bridge bounces about fairly alarmingly especially when big lorries cross.  It is probably much less pleasant and more exiting in foul weather; difficult to imagine a more exposed location and you'd be drenched with traffic spray.

 

I'm old enough to remember the original Aust Services, which were a bit of a showpiece.  Opened with the bridge in 1966, it was massive and featured a restaurant with a big picture window overlooking the bridge with superb views on to the Welsh side, fronted by a grassed area that was extremely popular for picnics in summer.  Can you imagine going for a day trip to a Motorway Services? but that's what we did!  This was the future, just like in Thunderbirds!  The current Aust services is a pale remnant, a single-storyed collection of temporary-looking huts that look as if a decent breeze would see to them, which would be doing them a favour.  I have a fondness for the old M48 bridge, though, a graceful structure at a point in the esturary which is difficult to imagine without a bridge, so clearly suitable is it for one.

 

The Second Severn Crossing is technically far superior, a cable stay bridge that is much steadier in a crosswind and has wind deflectors that enable high-sided vehicles to use it in conditions which would close the old bridge to all traffic.  I'm old enough to remember the car ferries, Beachley-Aust and the Severn Tunnel Jc-Pilning rail ferry, having been taken over both of them several times on childhood holidays to Cornwall or Dorset.  Both were fascinating and interesting but of course I preferred the train, and even when there were long queues for them, which there often were, saved a good bit of journey time on runs to the South or West; this was in the pre-motorway days whin getting to Cornwall from Cardiff if you went around by Gloucester and the Over bridge would take about fourteen hours, of which the ferries saved about four.  It now takes about five to get right down to the far end, traffic permitting (I'm looking at you, Avonmouth Bridge and Gordano section).

Edited May 15, 2023 by The Johnster

[Michael Hodgson]

Yes, I well remember the Aust services when it first opened, but I would point out that the view is mostly of England!  Both ends of the bridge are in fact in England (it was built with one pier in the county of Avon on the eastern side to another in Gloucestershire on the west), the Welsh border being the middle of the cable-stayed bridge over the river Wye, an impressive feat of engineering in its own right, although nobody really notices it since it's dwarfed by the Severn Bridge.  I've walked over both Bridges a few times, usually starting from the western side. Looking down from that footpath over the fence at the point where the two bridges meet, I was once suprised to see a number of young ladies sun-bathing in the grounds of Beachley Barracks.

 

The bridge does indeed bounce quite a lot, though it's not quite as bad as it used to be, I think the reason is they did a lot of work to it.  It was not unusual for me to drive over the bridge using a contraflow on one carriageway, and when I returned later the same day it was the opposite carriageway that was closed. 

 

Call me cynical if you like, but I think the authorities were quite worried about the safety of that bridge not long after the collapse of a box girder bridge in West Wales (the Cleddau bridge?).  The reason the toll barriers were on west bound traffic only is that had they tried collecting tolls from eastbound traffic on the eastern side of the bridge (there wasn't room to have erected them at the western end), it would have resulted in traffic queueing on the bridge itself during busy periods.   Some of that traffic was very heavy - by no means all of the output from the Spencer steelworks at Llanwern went to England by rail, and I don't think they wanted lorries nose-to-tail on the bridge.

 

The one-way toll itself was politically sensitive - some said it was a tax on goods imported into Wales, or an entry tax damaging the Welsh tourist industry.  No doubt it would have been called a tax to discourage the Welsh from leaving Wales had they collected  the money in the opposite direction.  It did result in assymetric traffic patterns across Monmouthshire though, especially to the Cotswolds or the Midlands.  When I visited my parents I always went via Gloucester and the A48, but often returned using the motorway.  When my father's mobility got to the point that he had difficulty walking, he said he wasn't disabled and would never have applied for the blue badge he was entitled to, but for the fact that it meant he could go to Bristol without paying the toll! 

[The Johnster]

It was indeed the Cleddau Bridge that some box-girder pre-cast concrete sections fell off during the contruction, sadly killing four workmen, in 1970.  The box-girder sections had been fabricated at the Fairfield Yard in Chepstow, which is where those for the M48 Severn Bridge and the adjoining Wye Brodge had been built, but at Cleddau they were self-supporting whereas the Severn and Wye Bridges were a suspension and a cable stay bridge respectively and the box-sections were solely to impart rigidity to the roadway surface on the tops of them.  

 

As you rightly say, the M48 Wye Bridge is a pretty impressive structure in it’s own right, and the border is at it’s central point directly above the centre of the river beneath.  The ‘Croeso I Gymru/Welcome To Wales’ marker notice is a few yards on the Welsh side of the Wye Bridge, in the very short distance between the end of that bridge and the slip road accessing the Bukwark Interchange roundabout.  

[MJI]

Depending on start location I have used

 

A48 (if M4 join at Newport)

A40 (if M4 go A449 to Newport)

M5 M50 then either A40, A449 to M4, or A472 Head of Valleys

A449 most of way

Lots of cross country routes to most of different parts of Wales.

 

As I was in a convoy the ONE time (car delivery) that was forced on me, why waste money on a crossing instead of going north 2 miles to A48.

 

Someone at work wanted route recommendation M5 M50 A40 A449 M4 but was worried about getting lost so went to Bristol despite being a lot longer and more expensive.

[Steamport Southport]

19 hours ago, TheQ said:

The descriptions of Cornwall, with tourists, holiday homes , and second homers, is a good description of Norfolk. Many villages in and around Wells have over 50% second homes, this is spreading along the coast, the busiest traffic is a Friday evening as all the foreigners come up for the weekend.

 

Aha!

 

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