• (disco) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    It'd be a fun road to drive except for all the other vehicles.

    The Fosse Way used to be the fastest route from my office to the NEC. I am not a fast driver...but our manager succeeded in removing one of his wing mirrors (it left a dent right down the side of the car) overtaking into oncoming traffic on the Fosse. He did not stop. The person in the passenger seat insisted on taking the train back from Birmingham, and told me that at the time of the accident there was 140 on the speedometer. Later, the guy got banned and I had to drive him around for a month, with him whinging all the time that I drove like an old woman. Revenge came when he was fired and I got his job. The thing about the Fosse Way is that it may be straight viewed from above, but not from the side. There are plenty of blind dips. But in any case nowadays it's quicker up the M5.

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk
    kupfernigk:
    But in any case nowadays it's quicker up the M5.

    It depends on where you're travelling between. My main problem with the Fosse Way is the fact that if you take it and go south, once you get beyond Cirencester it get's messy. Or rather the road ceases to be, and you have to take another route, and those drag you lengthways through town after annoying town. Bath, or Bradford-on-Avon, or Melksham… yuck. The only good route past the Avon is the M5 west of Bristol.

    The northern end is awkward too, but you can efficiently go via Coventry and the M69 (which is parallel) instead, so that's no big deal. I believe that the part from Leicester to Newark is fast (it looks like it on the map) but I've never driven it.

    Yet for all that, there are some quite fun stretches. The part between Cirencester and Stow-on-the-Wold is good driving road, with opportunity for fun passing of vehicles in a few places, as is the bit just north of Halford (though you probably would turn off it there if you were going to the NEC).

  • (disco) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    and those drag you lengthways through town after annoying town. Bath, or Bradford-on-Avon, or Melksham… yuck

    Melksham is truly yuck. But the main reason for the Bath/BoA problem,I believe, is the Dimbleby family and the Limpley Stoke landowners who used their connections to resist the bypass,so it never made it to the A36. The result is that the main road from Bristol to Southampton passes along a hillside route more like a Swiss road to a Jura village than a significant transport link. Which is funny only because I know of some of those people in LS and it now infuriates them that it takes them so long to get into Bath.

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk
    kupfernigk:
    the main reason for the Bath/BoA problem

    The main reason is that the Avon is in a gorge there. Doing anything is going to be really expensive, as there's a fairly high chance of needing something like a high-level viaduct. Costly. (Landowners can be brought round eventually, but topography can't be reasoned with.)

    There isn't such a problem up at Melksham; the problem there is that the town was bypassed a long time ago, and then the town thought that it would be a great idea to build more things directly onto the bypass, so it became just another clogged up part of the town. It just needs another bypass, probably upstream of the town (and missing Lacock Abbey, of course).

    The real point is that all the Avon crossings are miserable. (Bristol is especially miserable, but you'd expect that; it's a city after all.) It's the combination of lots of people living round there and a river that is rather awkward. It's not the only river in England like that either.

  • (disco) in reply to dkf

    That's the thing with rivers in general - they attract population because of arable land. And the best places to build bridges were claimed centuries ago and grew towns around them.

  • (disco) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    Doing anything is going to be really expensive, as there's a fairly high chance of needing something like a high-level viaduct. Costly. (Landowners can be brought round eventually, but topography can't be reasoned with.)

    actually no

    I've lived around here for 30 years this winter, and I stand by my original statement. This article refers indirectly to the 1990s, but the half mile link is back on the agenda. The road above Limpley Stoke possibly needs a Swiss solution in the long term as you suggest, but actually in the mid term a cantilevered road would do it. If we could block the artics...which Bath was prevented from doing by legal challenges, but might yet happen, then it would be feasible. The fact is that a viaduct is not needed to link the A46/A36 (and it would knock a fair bit of time off the north/south journey and remove the traffic problems from BonA. When you've seen an overloaded Polish artic in BonA using a cheap Tomtom satnav, you've seen it all.) The other solution would involve building a road over the route of the Kennet and Avon canal, but I would find that very sad personally as in the past I've kept a boat there.

    PleegWat:
    That's the thing with rivers in general - they attract population because of arable land. And the best places to build bridges were claimed centuries ago and grew towns around them.

    Too true. In the case we're discussing, the "best" routes through Bath and Bradford-on-Avon are claimed by town centres around river crossings. After WW2 there was an integrated transport plan to fix travel around the South-west...but it turned out London was much more important. The result is that south of Bath or north of Bath East-west travel is easy, but north-south travel is a joke.

  • (disco) in reply to kupfernigk
    kupfernigk:
    When you've seen an overloaded Polish artic in BonA using a cheap Tomtom satnav, you've seen it all.

    The one time I went through there, the HGV coming in the opposite direction wasn't coming round a corner or going over a bridge. I counted myself lucky. :smile:

    kupfernigk:
    Too true. In the case we're discussing, the "best" routes through Bath and Bradford-on-Avon are claimed by town centres around river crossings.

    Arguably the best option now is to improve the A350 (i.e., bypass Melksham properly) and to build a better link road across to the A361 (so bypassing Trowbridge). It involves the least complex engineering and probably the least obstreperous landowners too. It won't help with the Bath area though; it's more about providing better north/south freight routes. (Of course, if they do that they also have to tackle the stretch south of Shaftesbury which is currently not really safe for freight, according to Wikipedia.)

    Bah, it's a complicated knot.

  • (disco) in reply to SufficientlyFinite
    SufficientlyFinite:
    To the MS Grammar Thing's ™ defense, “your out of office should be turned off” is terrible style. I think “your 'out of office' “ or “your out-of-office-notification” would be better options.

    do danti lo briju

  • (disco) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    English has borrowed lots of words from its empire, but usually where the word had no good English synonym (…) Adopting for what would reasonably appear to be a common word…
    I don’t know about Swedish, but in Dutch and German the word for “boy” basically means “young one” and, IIRC, used to originally refer to any child, boy or girl. If the same was true in Swedish, then there would have been a point in adopting a foreign word to mean “male child.”
  • (disco) in reply to Gurth
    Gurth:
    I don’t know about Swedish, but in Dutch and German the word for “boy” basically means “young one” and, IIRC, used to originally refer to any child, boy or girl. If the same was true in Swedish, then there would have been a point in adopting a foreign word to mean “male child.”

    You've got to allow for historical culture too. If the culture that used a language did not ascribe as much value to female children as male children, it's entirely possible that the "young one" term could get attached to males.

  • (disco) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    did not ascribe as much value to female children as male children, it's entirely possible that the "young one" term could get attached to males.

    That's probably the cause why "man" - originally meaning "human, regardless of sex" - has changed its meaning to "male human". (Btw, same in German with "Mann", although we have the (maybe former diminutive?) "Mensch" for both sexes.)

  • (disco) in reply to Gurth

    In English, boys used to be called 'nave girls', and girls 'gay girls'.

    Doesn't work so well with modern use of 'gay' though...

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK
    RaceProUK:
    In English, boys used to be called 'nave girls', and girls 'gay girls'.

    TIL.<x>

  • (disco) in reply to loose
    loose:
    It's not just the idioms - and this really applies to all English speaking countries, and that's Brand names.

    Definitely. The US is big enough that many brands are regional, so this differentiates us among ourselves, let alone other countries.

    loose:
    Durex

    Yes, we have Durex condoms. That brand used to be Sheik, IIRC.

  • (disco) in reply to boomzilla
    boomzilla:
    Sheik

    http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/zelda/images/8/82/Sheik_(SSB_3DS_%26_Wii_U).png

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK

    Wouldn’t that properly be Sheika, or if you will, شيخة‎?

  • (disco) in reply to Gurth

    No

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