(The booths are gone, but the traffic remains the same...)
Scrobs had to go to Chelmsford earlier in the week. The journey used to be quite a short and pleasant trip back in the eighties, when I had a lot of work in East Anglia, but this time - whoooooa - what an absolute mare!
Of course, the Scrobmobile is the sort of car that seventy-somethings like driving, and if they brought out a VW Rugby, I’d probably buy two, but anyway, the doddle up to North Kent was the usual slow meander, until the Dartford Tunnel approach tail-back started eight miles before the actual crossing! It took me half an hour to cross, and about the same on the way back.
I can easily remember visiting a favourite aunt and uncle near Shefford back in 1964, riding a 125cc Lambretta. I can’t remember the fee to get under the Thames, but it must have been just a few pence even in old money. Nowadays, the charge for a return trip is a whopping £5.00! About a million vehicles cross over every week.
The government promised that the tunnel and bridge would be toll-free twenty years ago, but that idea has been kicked down the road over the years, and the crossing is still a huge cash cow for the Ministry of Transport, which offers a ludicrous statement that ‘the bridge needs continuing maintenance because of - wait for it - increased traffic’! The ‘costs’ are entirely justified!
The chief engineer on the bridge is a personal friend, and I’ll have to ask him what he thinks the next time we’re testing the quality of Shep’s 'Old Bridge Stanchion' - 8.7abv...
7 comments:
First comment is that I had to highlight your post because it was in some sort of brown shade and I couldn't read it.
Second comment is that travelling anywhere by whatever means appears to be a total nightmare in itself. Delayed or cancelled trains and flights, huge traffic jams, increased toll charges - it's not worth the hassle if you can help it.
Yes, sorry about the formatting, GG, I won't bore you with what went wrong!
The millions of splonders squeezed from the public on the crossing is an utter disgrace. When I was getting through London regularly in the nineties, I always used the Blackwall Tunnel, as, despite being a crawl, at least it crawled properly, and most people acknowledged that and drove accordingly.
The Rotherhithe Tunnel is an odd one, as it's hard to find, and doesn't really take you anywhere interesting, but the Woolwich ferry is fun, if you have an hour to waste...
Governments are good at ludicrous statement though. Easy to criticise but they know a lot of people won't bother simply because the statement is ludicrous and life is too short.
My first motorised transport was a Lambretta. Happy days.
My first transport was a Robin Reliant and that was fun too especially if you went round a bend a bit too fast!
You're grand with that statement, Mr H, (you can see that I've been reading a Graham Masterton thriller), and I've realised that the concept of another Thames Crossing has been quietly shelved too!
The only time I ever drove one of those, GG, was when I went out on a trip with two chums, and we all had a turn.
The clutch was so fierce, I had to start off in third gear...
The power of a three-wheeler is actually extremely positive, as all the strength goes down into one wheel, but now I've said that, I can't remember if that happened on a Reliant - it did on the early Morgans...
Depends where you live. Getting around and about here is a breeze. I recall our general hospital in Watford was 3 miles away (an hour's drive !)
Our nearest here is 12 miles away (half an hour's drive !)
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