Nice Roads

There are roads we call 'nice' because they are well-made with nice cambers and gradients and wide enough to negotiate safely in or on whatever vehicle we are riding or driving at the time.

Another sort of 'nice' road is one that takes us through striking or dramatic scenery or views, where the quality of the road building is less important than the setting.

Just now I thought of another sort of 'nice' road, one with happy associations or memories associated with it. One of these is a stretch of the A465 from Abergavenny to Hereford. I used to negotiate this stretch of road on the trip from my home in Bridgend to visit family in Hereford. When I got to this bit I knew that Hereford was almost in sight and I'd soon be meeting up with my grandmother, my uncle and aunt and my cousins. That warm feeling of anticipation comes back to me when I think of that stretch of road, and the dimly-remembered views of hills fields and the river running alongside the road for a distance. I imagine it in bright sunlight, and in colour.

Another similar warm feeling of anticipation is for the old main road between Huddersfield and Leeds. In my student years this route would take me to visit my girlfriend and I would be looking forward to the kissing and cuddling and trips to the pub. High points in my week as they are for most young men I'm sure.

These memories are not blighted by time. Hereford has changed. It is now a terrible trap for traffic. My grandmother, aunt and uncle are no longer with us. My cousins have all grown up and become parents and grandparents and to some degree have become strangers. I don't even know where some of them live now but the memories I laid down those decades ago are still recalled by bring up that view from the Abergavenny road.The road between Huddersfield and Leeds is still there, but harder to find since it is overlaid and surrounded by motorway and bypasses and the scenery has changed as the urban sprawl has engulfed the fields that used to separate the towns.

It is said you cannot ever go back and that is true. We experience not just a place in space, but an event in space and time. And those events are unique and have gone forever. Only our memory, that most unreliable of faculties, remains to comfort us. But as well as remembering the scenery, sounds and colours and images, we remember our feelings and emotions of the time and they are precious.