Back when I first joined CAR, road test editor Chris Chilton showed me his favoured road route for when he had 30 minutes to take something out for a good thrash. You can include some stop/start urban traffic as part of it if you wish, but most of the route is over some brilliant, bumpy back roads around Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire.
The upside to CAR’s HQ being based in Peterborough is that we are literally 60 seconds from some excellent cross-country roads. None of this London gridlock for us.
One of the best parts of the route is just a mile from the office, a crest (complete with an uneven transverse ridge) before a downhill left-hander with a bit of compression at the bottom. It’s a great test of any car’s suspension and chassis set-up: a diesel Alfa Mito was the most recent car to come undone over said crest. But now the uneven ridge has gone! Boo!
I came into work the other morning to be greeted by roadworks, and today I discovered the bump has been smoothed out. Damn. Clearly someone from Health & Safety or A.N.Other local busy-body department has deemed it unsafe (and yes, it wasn’t a particulalry friendly piece of tarmac) but it was great for us.
Just as Porsche is rumoured to have a deal with its local government office to leave a stretch of rough road near its engineering base alone, I think CAR needs to strike a similar deal. Every bit of road within a 20-mile radius needs to be left untouched. What say you, Peterborough City Council?
>> Click ‘Add your comment’ below and let us know about your favourite stretch of road. Have roadworks caused its ruin?