Dr Hutch

Road closures are the bane of motorists' lives and the gain of cyclists', so long may their patchy progress continue

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There are few sights as glorious as one of those big red signs with the tantalising words, “Road closed ahead.” If you’re lucky there will be a row of traffic cones, nicely spaced to admit only the righteous and filter out all others. And beyond them, pure freedom.

In this regard cyclists are totally different from drivers. No one in a car is ever happy with a road-closed sign. They take it as an insult, an affront to their liberty. They rail against the injustice and the tyranny of the small, yellow diversion sign that points straight to motorist hell. And I am glad.

Their rage would be only the greater if they knew what we know, which is that at least 50% of the time the road beyond the sign is empty of road works, or holes, or any other impediment. It’s a sneaky, aberrant gift that the gods of dodgy road-department administration cast our way.

Having a road all to yourself, especially one that you’ve previously been used to sharing with motor traffic, is a profound pleasure. Sometimes, depending on local geography, the empty road lasts for miles. When I did most of my riding in London, there were a few weeks where they closed almost all the roads in Richmond Park. (Richmond is a large park, with about a seven-mile road lap, and for a lot of South West London it’s almost all there is for road riding. It’s generally choked with traffic taking a shortcut.)