[Tech1] Ho hum

[Nick Ware]

How funny! The instant I saw those pix, and before I read a word of your text, I knew exactly where that is. It’s about 150yds from Burnt Common roundabout where I lived for 35 years!
At that point, you have just passed Send Primary School and Send Infants’ schools on your right, neither of which have off-street parking for parents to drop off and collect their kids. Most parents, too lazy to walk them to school, seemingly find it necessary to drive huge diesel tonka toys (it is Surrey, after all!).
On your left, you have just passed the Send Medical Centre, which has a car park, but many of their patients are decrepid old codgers turning in and out, who shouldn’t be driving anyway.
Just hidden behind the trees at the turning to your right, is a large mansion owned by a senior Tory Cabinet Minister, who I happen to know doesn’t like noisy traffic speeding past his tennis court and swimming pool!
150 yds ahead is Burnt Common roundabout. That’s a traffic nightmare at the best of times, with traffic peeling off the A3 in order to rat-run through Ripley village in the hope of jumping the constant queue onto the M25 at Wisley. It’s also the most practical route for Woking-bound traffic exiting the M25 at jct 10 (through Ripley and Send and Old Woking villages).
Huge backhanders got the five pump-lane Shell petrol station moved from further down the road into Ripley, to an utterly ludicrous site right on the roundabout. (Older readers may remember the relative tranquil that was the Happy Eater on that site). Ditto, a large distribution centre the other (right) side of the roundabout - lorry and petrol tanker mayhem day and night. And soon to be 400 new-build housing estate.
And let’s not even mention the hundreds of deafeningly noisy motorbikes heading to Newlands Corner every weekend!
Traffic has steadily increased since we first moved there (obviously), and whereas for all those years we cursed the rat-runners, lorries, motorbikes,  etc., we now are among them! Our only route from the traffic-free haven that we now enjoy, onto the M25 jct 10, is past our old house!
While still in “The Ware-house”, which directly faced the Shell site, we campaigned hard to get the speed limit from the roundabout reduced to 30mph into Ripley where it is 30 already. We were repeatedly told that there is a mandatory minimum distance between which any changes to speed limits can be. Crap, I say, but there it was.
And finally, as the saying goes: a few years ago during our time there, on the exact bend you see ahead of you, a close friend of my elder son crashed his motorbike one night, with his girlfried on the back. It skidded into the undergrowth, and it took a most of the next day for the emergency services to find her head, still in its helmet.
Stick to the speed limit and stay safe!
Cheers,
Nick.
 Nick Ware - From my iPad mini 6

On 1 Jun 2022, at 17:48, Bernard Newnham via Tech1 <tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk> wrote:

 It's gone a bit quiet.........

There I was gently driving south on the A247 out of Send village, where the speed limit is sensibly 30 and I was doing it.  As I left the village, the road widened, the houses went away. I relaxed my foot just a little.

[1.PNG]


Surprise!  Just round the bend, in a bus stop with a prominent yellow no parking line, was parked an eager chap with a speed gun

[2.PNG]

37mph in a 30 limit. I'm an incredibly dangerous driver! Or just another way of upping statistics and collecting money. First time in 56 year of driving.  I'm certainly an evil criminal, but I do resent this stuff. It doesn't make me a newly reformed citizen, it just annoys me. So, I opt for the £85 speed awareness course, instead of £100 and three points, and look up places. Oh - The Hogs Back Hotel - can get a decent coffee. No - though it's advertised they are still Covid locked out. So Zoom here for 2.5 hours in August.

And the moral of this tale, is - if you are sending yourself south out of Send, stop just past the lay by and take his registration and a picture for parking illegally.

B




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