Residents of Pontfadog, a small village in the Ceiriog Valley, Wales, have created a new tourist attraction to draw attention to the area’s deteriorating road conditions. Pothole Land is a satirical response to what many locals feel is the failure of Wrexham Borough Council to maintain the roads in and around the village. At the top of a local lane, resident Russell Kirk has called the potholes the “widest, deepest, and longest” in Wales – and certainly, they are hazardous. The council has declined to comment on the matter.
Many locals have complained about the poor state of the roads and the impact they are having on their lives. Edd Rayner from the neighbouring village of Nantyr called every journey a “treacherous expedition.” The roads make it difficult for delivery drivers to reach the area and mean people who would once have visited now avoid doing so. Jan Gilchrist commented that it now took her fifteen minutes to reach the nearby village, a journey that should take five. The wider problem isn’t just confined to Ceiriog Valley either, as a survey showed that local road conditions were at an all-time low in 2024 because of decades of underfunding.
The unorthodox solution of Pothole Land came about largely as a result of the frustration residents feel towards the council. They report the potholes repeatedly, but nothing is ever done. Russell Kirk’s view is that anger is not the answer and that it’s better to use humour to raise the issue’s profile. The hope is that this will spur the council into action. While creating a tourist attraction rather than actual repairs might not seem like the most productive use of energy, the cost of damaged cars due to poor road surfaces in the UK in 2024 was £579m.
Although local authorities are having to deal with constrained finances, the cost of repairs across England and Wales is estimated to be over £16bn. Nevertheless, Flintshire council has recently invested in a “pothole pro” machine that speeds up the process of filling in potholes. The council’s budget is still only £1.7m, which it says is less than half of what is needed for road maintenance. This is a “never-ending circle”, says councillor Glyn Banks, with budgets being squeezed everywhere
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