The study of British and Irish roads - their construction, numbering, history, mapping, past and future official roads proposals and general roads musings.
There is a separate forum for Street Furniture (traffic lights, street lights, road signs etc).
Registered users get access to other forums including discussions about other forms of transport, driving, fantasy roads and wishlists, and roads quizzes.
A video taken on the aforementioned road, together with a sung ode to the road (otherwise known as an excuse for the native Welsh singer to rattle off the names of the towns/villages en-route).
Brilliant, and made me quite wistful, as the A470 is one of my all-time favourite drives. It's a great road to drive on and a relief to someone living where I do (if you live in my part of the country you'll know what I mean). Some nice shots of the area round Rhayader, which is one of my favourite places to go on holiday.
Welsh-English anthology about Welsh equivalent of Route 66 republished twice since release on St David’s Day
It is variously described as a snake, a zip, a ribbon, a scar, a Welsh version of Route 66. Memories, myths and moments of love and grief are woven into a collection of poems celebrating an unusual subject – the A470 road that links north and south Wales.
Though the subject matter may seem unpromising, the collection A470: Poems for the Road / Cerddi’r Ffordd, has proved popular with critics and readers and has already been reprinted twice since it was launched on St David’s Day in March.
Sian Northey, who co-edited the volume, came up with the idea of asking people to write – in Welsh or English – a poem about the road, which stretches 186 miles from Cardiff in the south to Llandudno in the north, cutting through towns, villages, mountains and valleys.
The poems chosen were translated and printed side by side in both languages. Hundreds of people sent in contributions – about a third in Welsh – to the publisher, Arachne Press, and 51 were chosen.
Northey said the A470 was a good topic because most Welsh people had some sort of opinion – good or bad – of the road. “People who travel it regularly tend to curse it, while those who use it less often have fonder feelings,” she said.
It so happens I've picked up a copy of this book from my local bookshop the other day.
Its a well-curated collection with each piece presented in both Welsh and English (like all good road signs). Its also a bit of fun to work out if a piece was originally Welsh or English, as the translations are well written.
Also, there's a Tudur Dylan poem about the A470/A487 multiplex, and who doesn't want poetry about that!
