Roads, Roads, Roads

Many roads in use today were conceived and built by the Romans, and for some of these roads, it may well be that an Italian in armour and Bronze Galeae was the last person to work on them.


Take Ludborough Road in North Thoresby. Go on, take it. It’s rubbish and it’s not long had some work completed on it! Ludborough Road is one of 3 roads into the village, 2 of which are direct from the busy A16.

It is a Road that has problems. Severe problems. I no longer have a 4x4 and when I traverse it’s length - which I have to do regularly - I really wish I still did. The very poor state of the road does give rise to several in-car games we play and yes, most of them are the opposite of join the dots. It’s more ‘avoid the dots and drive around them’ which even were I in a tiny Smart car would be a challenge. There’s that many of them and some of them are deeper than a fairly deep thing.


A Roman soldier-surveyor, standing in this road with his groma in his hand (look it up), would scratch his head in sadness and disbelief, wondering just how we let it get into such a bad state of repair.

It is full of holes, is generally uneven along its whole length, is patched (and even some of the patches have been patched) and considering the village has about 1,000 souls; has lots of use by all sorts of vehicles over a day, even in these altered times.

The Roman soldier would maybe consider that here was a track suitable for having a Roman Road built over it - the fact that money has been spent at some point to try to repair it may come as a surprise to him, we’re there a surprised ‘Thoresbian’ on hand able to explain things to him.

I’m sure that those who have worked on it recently have done their best and I thank them for their service. But the road is poorly maintained and in the village there are others unfortunately in the same state. You can tell where the repairs have been made, but many of them (nice black squares of smooth travel) abutt holes of equal size and depth of the patched neighbour.


The roads in the area need help, but then there are lots of things that need help in and around Lincolnshire. In and around the UK. Things have to be prioritised in this ever changing world and in some ways village roads might not immediately spring to mind.

Yet roads connect us in many ways, physically by joining us to neighbouring settlements, and emotionally as they are conduits to meet fellow villagers whilst out walking and even in these odd times, chatting to a neighbour whilst out for a constitutional provides human contact and helps create a sense of community.


The Romans knew that to operate an empire they had to have dependable lines of communication; they had to be connected. Across Europe they had to send messages for a variety of reasons in by a variety of methods. So they built and maintained their roads, some of which are still, in some ways; being used today. (And as an interesting aside, the width of modern day trains owe their size to these roads and Italian builders.)

Poor roads damage vehicles and annoy locals. They interrupt and reduce connections between people. They impact upon how a community views their surroundings and can affect civic pride.


The Roman Soldier-surveyor would want to get digging and repairing Ludborough Road and it would take him quite a while, given his impressive but limited set of tools.


We are lucky, our technology is far more advanced and faster, it’s just a shame that the resulting Road doesn’t seem to last as long…