Brynglas Tunnels

Nothing to do with football, why don't we just blow the ****ers up and drive the road straight through!!! I know there are houses on top, but can't we just rehome them down the Bay?

Four bloody hours stuck going round Newport Southern Feeder to bypass the lorry fire at that nightmare spot. I wouldn't want to spend 4 hours in Newport anyway, let alone being forced to.............

Late for an appointment in Bristol but managed to put it back, and then didn't get home until 9pm last night. God, life's a bitch sometimes.

 

Been caught out there a couple of times myself, used to love driving my old TVR back and fore through them though

 

Sparkey, aint it a bit of a risk you venturing into Brizzle after the mayhem you have caused on their board

 

Now guys I was born and brought (not dragged) up in one of the houses immediately above the tunnels so cannot countenance my past being decimated by the total destruction of Brynglas (green hill in Welsh - the only Welsh I know apart from dim parcio). When the original tunnels collapsed during construction in 1967 (might have been 1968 - its a long time ago) they considered buying 80% of the hill and putting a cutting through to eliminate tunnels. There was a lot of local opposition and I think the cost of rehoming everyone was prohibitive as well (their insurance paid for the damage to the remaining houses - we had a complete new extension on the back). As a result they stuck with the tunnels plan.

With hindsight a cutting might have been better although there would still have been a huge extra cost to enlarge it to 3 lanes each way a few years later to get rid of the bottle neck.

I'm afraid the only way this will be resolved is by the creation of a southerly route (as proposed, discused and rejected 2 or 3 years ago) which would significantly damage areas of valuable wildlife along the Severn and mouth of the Usk - cue tree huggers rioting in Cardiff Bay.

No easy solution I'm afraid, trouble is one event like yesterday and the whole area goes tits up. Good job it happened in the school holidays with around 30% less traffic on the road at peak times.

The contra flow in the tunnels made me 10 minutes late for work this morning. So much stress. LOL. Much easier getting home last night though once I reached Junction 28.

Sparkey - you should have cut your losses and gone from bristol down to Yeovil to see the game last night and travelled home later when the roads were quiet.

 

Ace - it was South Bristol too (home of the Wurzels) as opposed to the Gas area in the north. I kept my head down and told them I was really Proph.....

BlueyBridgend - You mean there was 30% less traffic yesterday? Also too late for Yeovil anyway really because I didn't leave Cheddar (cue Proph ) until well gone 7pm and had a good run home.

Didn't trust that one-tunnel contra flow I'd picked up on the radio after the morning disaster, so got off the M4 at Chepstow and headed down the A48. Did a quick left up over Catsash and dropped down into Caerleon/Ponthir and got back on M4 at Malpas to miss it. Still got home by 9pm.

 

Sparks

You could have got to Yeovil in time for kick off.

Good to see you know the back roads of Newport. Around 40 years ago I spent many happy hours parked in cars late at night on the Catsash Road. Lived off the fruits of love and next day the ducks wore the skins as wellingtons.

 

The "back roads" of Newport and Cardiff were on my patch back in the 80's when I was responsible for the M&E works on some development sites in East Wales.

The Newport ones - Underwood, Langstone (no, not the Hamman one ), Caerleon, Ponthir, Duffryn, Bassaleg, Rogerstone etc were all in there amongst many others, and I got to know the rat runs.

BTW, I should have said a qick "right" up over Catsash, not left.

.....and wizey - you can piss off too or I'll be over there to haunt you again.......

 

Wize - he can't spell (or is it the Wurzel version?) and apparently a totally incorrect adjective.

 

My mother's mini once broke down while in the outside lane at 5.00 pm in there and had to be pushed out by some rather unhappy people.

 

Bit like Russian Roulette on wheels.

A woman driver once lost control in there doing about 90 mph. She tried to loop the loop but failed. Ouch!!!!

 

I loved the sight of those tunnels when I used to drive home from BAOR in the eighties, it meant I was only 12 mile from home.