The Great C Road hunt!

[ravenbluemoon]

I sent a couple of FoIs out in the Midlands* area last week. Solihull were very quick to reply, and there's a spreadsheet attached.

Apart from listing every motorway in the country they do have a motley collection of C, YM, YSL and YU roads. The C roads are annoyingly 8 digit, and seem to be a copy of the code from the NSG. Haven't a clue about what Class the Y roads are, they'll be something to check out when I'm back off holiday in a week or so.

*West and Northnorthnorthamptonshire, Rutland also got FoI'd.

[ravenbluemoon]

I've finally completed Leicestershire!

Elsewhere, I've traced West Northamptonshire, and waiting for North Northamptonshire to come back to me.

Rutland directed me to "Find my Street" so I replied, asking if they knew the numbers. FoI Officer asked the Highways Department, who didn't know. However - I've done some digging on the internet, and found a few roads - the first one was an unrelated FoI about a bridleway that mentioned the C6305... confirming that they use Leicestershire's numbering system. Doing some more random googling of road numbers that venture over the border, I found a couple of PDF leaflets about walks by Discover Rutland - two of the village walks mention the C5305 (connects with Leics) and the C9316 somewhere near Exton, but don't know which road it is.

Final random source is a website detailing traffic accidents in 2011 (not going to provide link as my browser said the site was unsecure!) - this made mentions of about a dozen C roads in Rutland in the reports - the C8324 had a lot of accidents in 2011!

That's as best as I can do with Rutland, at some point I'll sort some map traces and pages for what I know.

[Chris Bertram]

It should be no surprise that Rutland uses Leicestershire's system, seeing that it was a district of that county for 20-odd years.

[ravenbluemoon]

Most of the East Midlands is complete now - I'm occasionally adding to the Lincolnshire ones as and when decide to do some traces and pages. But effectively, we're complete in England in a big swathe down the A1 corridor to the edge of London.

Currently I'm going through the list for Worcestershire (I wasn't going to but fell down the rabbit hole while connecting across the border into Warwickshire and Solihull!) - I had noticed that they are generally 4 digits starting with a "2". Comparing with the list for Herefordshire that exists, it seems like the two counties had their own numbering systems prior to 1974. Then they got merged as the County of Hereford and Worcester - and to avoid duplication Herefordshire roads were prefixed with a "1" and Worcestershire with a "2". Since they went their seperate ways in 1998, they've kept to the H&W numbering.

[ravenbluemoon]

I thought it would be of interest to do a quick review of where we are now with respect to progress - I won't be doing much more this year as I'll be away without my laptop (it should give time for Steven to fix all my historic county mistakes )

I've been keeping tabs on my own progress with a map that I've been colouring in as I go. It wasn't meant for public consumption so could be confusing, but I've attached below (click for better resolution):



Red: Authorites/areas I've completed (Pink are "in progress")
Purple: Authorities/areas completed by others
Lilac: Authorities mostly complete - there may be either a fair few of the pages/traces done, and/or a list on the Wiki
Yellow: We have a list on the Wiki, but we don't know the road numbers
Green: A couple of roads on the Wiki so far.
Light Grey: Nothing on the Wiki (but there's details available, see the Great C Road Hunt page on the Wiki)
Dark Grey: Nothing on the Wiki and we don't have any data available. It might be because the council doesn't have details, or won't let us have it, or the link from 9 years ago is broken. I'm still waiting for East Yorkshire to get their backsides into gear and update their GIS Map, as promised!

I've also worked out some facts on a spreadsheet, in short:

Class III roads traced and on our Wiki: 40200km (24969 miles), 9162 roads, of which:
-Scotland: 10131km (6292 miles) , 2430 roads - complete
-Northern Ireland: 4548km (2425 miles), 528 roads - complete
-Wales: 149km (93 miles), 65 roads - still loads to do
-England: 25320km (15727 miles), 6103 roads - plenty done, still lots of gaps.

There's still plenty to do, and maybe some easy counties to attempt if someone new wants to try. There's also a load of route descriptions and photos etc. to add to ones already done. I've done just shy of 15000km of map tracing over almost 3500 roads, so I'm going to have a break until the new year

[c2R]

It's great to see the progress coming along - I admit that having done a couple of counties, I'm doing more with SABRE Maps at the moment.....

[c2R]

Here's a road sign for the C271 (NI)

[varga]

Im not sure, I am not on the lookout fir such things personally, but I dont think I've ever seen signs pointing to a C-road. Ever.

...having said this, Hawes in the North Riding or some place roundabout there I vaguely recall seeing one

[ravenbluemoon]

...having said this, Hawes in the North Riding or some place roundabout there I vaguely recall seeing one

That'll probably be the C32. There's a pretty famous sign for it as you leave Hawes. Actually I'm surprised a photo hasn't found its way in the road's gallery yet.

That part of Wensleydale is peppered with Class III routes, like the C34 - but they rarely appear on signage.

[ravenbluemoon]

Something I mentioned to a couple of folks at the AGM on Saturday was the unexpected finding of a ZR road in Caldicot - the ZR138, which by my reckoning is the new contender for highest* road number in the UK! It was found in a list of traffic sensitive routes, and although it follows a pedestrianised road for a stretch it is confirmed as Class III on FindMyStreet.

Monmouthshire is strange in that it uses "R" prefixes for Class III roads, and "C" for unclassified. Same goes for Newport and Torfaen, which (presumably) share the numbering scheme.

*Or however you wish to call it