Working day is book-ended by tiresome motoring acrobatics

AT the risk of making myself sound like a shirker, it can sometimes feel as if the hardest part of my working day is getting to and from work in the first place.

- By OLIVER PRIDMORE

Having signed myself up for commutes from Retford to Nottingham, I was never naive to the fact that my journeys to the office would be slightly trickier than those of my city colleagues, who can take a leisurely stroll or quick bus ride in.

Yet the sheer carnage I'm sometimes met with on the dreaded A614 has often proved to be beyond my wildest expectations. If I've sometimes worked until late in the evening and I’m driving back home on inevitably quiet roads, I've been able to complete my commute in as little as 45 minutes.

So on the particularly crazy days, why has it sometimes taken me as long as an hour and a half to get back? Three words - the Ollerton Roundabout.

This unsightly funfair ride involves massive HGVs squaring up against cars, vans and cyclists around a tiny ring of terror that sits in the middle of a whopping six exits. The sheer volume of traffic coupled with the inadequate infrastructure means that only a tourist would ask the question “is there going to be traffic on the Ollerton Roundabout today?”