Thanks to all of you who have already signed the petition and more thanks to those who have been generous enough to help promote it.

Now you might not know this, but the A303 trunk road in Wiltshire experiences a significant amount of heavy goods vehicle (HGV) traffic daily. According to data from a manual count point on the A303, the average daily flow of HGVs was recorded at 2,156 in 2023. 

Back in 1939, when the bridge was constructed, there were only 400,000 or so HGV's in the UK.   That means each one of those would have had to cross the River Till twice in 1939 to match the use our bridge currently gets.

At our recent Meeting of the Parish, a villager wondered what state of repair our bridge was in and volunteered to go and take a peek.  He soon reported back that all was not well.  The photo above shows the rusting steel rebar reinforcement under the eastbound carriageway and clear spalling where the rust has forced the concrete apart.  There are also signs of some pretty shoddy repair attempts (top left of photo) with evidence of rust breaking through those.  So, just how corroded is that rebar, how strong is the road deck, and has the roadbed started to delaminate above the rebar?

Those are some interesting questions for the 1,000 plus HGV drivers who head east each day and the car drivers mixed in with them to ponder.  One might be tempted to think that those responsible for maintaining the A303 had rather neglected things, perhaps anticipating the A303 being returned to its pre-1939 status and Wiltshire Council's responsibility to repair?

Finally, my apologies for paraphrasing Pierre Boulle's book title.  Great book, great film.