Whilst I was on holiday this week gone I was driving on an un named tarmacadam road, which was only the width of the car. It went down into a dip and then rose up the other side. As I approached the dip I could see this sliver of water about an foot wide laying the full width of the road, but thought nothing of it. Well when I hit it there was one almighty jolt, boy in 47 years of driving I've hit some nasty pot holes in my time, but this beat the lot. I thought the engine and shock absorbers were about to come through the bonnet. Got out checked the wheels and tyres, seemed OK and off I went. But then about a mile down the road, I though to my self....what if I get home take it in for a service and MOT[booked for this Tuesday coming]and my man finds there is some damage. So I turned back to log it's exact position on my sat nav. Just about a 100 yards from this deep pothole stretching the full width of the road was a farm, and so I stopped and had a word with the farmer, a Mr Murray.

I said that's a fair pothole you have there, how on earth is anybody expected to negotiate that. With it holding water, you don't realised its a pothole until it's to late. I'm going to report it to the council, just in case it has done any damage I'm not aware of at this stage. He just smiled and said, that will be good, because he was sick to the teeth reporting it to the Northumbria County Council. Only to be told that they were aware of the problem. In fact he said there was some tourists a while back hit it, and it destroyed a tyre.

So on returning to the holiday cottage, I contacted the county council in question, making them fully aware that I knew the history regarding this particular pothole. That they had been contacted by the farmer Mr Murray on numerous occasion, and that other road users had sustained damage to their car as a result of this pothole. So in this instance it would appear that they have neglected their statutory duty to ensure the road was fit for purpose. I received no argument from the lady in question, saying she would fast track the issue with the road immediately. She took my details and the position of the pothole in question. She also agreed that if the car on inspection had suffer damage as a result of the pothole to contact the council.

That said, if your ever taking a short cut via your sat nav from either Etal or Ford Castle to the island of Lindisfarne, beware of water lying at the bottom of a dip in a country lane......well we are talking councils after all.

This was on 5th gear a few seasons ago and they were on about taking a picture and measuring it etc glad to see there doing something about it now its bloodey shocking.

Years ago back in the days of my family owning vauxhalls we had a veccy gsi msd (super tourer ie the white one with white chav alloys etc) for a little while and it took us about a month of battling with the north wales council over it after all msd veccy wheels are about 300-400 quid with out a tyre but in the end we won! we wernt the first to report this nasty !Removed! crack in the road you could live in it jokes aside it was about 8 inches deep and a good meter long but when ur playing with a msd vauxhall on some nice twisty roads your going a bit to fast to look out for a massive hole in the road after a hump back bridge (more concerned about the landing :P ).

Theres a road not far from where we live now thats getting pretty bad was in the paper about a week ago the council are getting slagged of about time if you ask me! bump up my road tax about time we see some bloodey improvements ... rant over

The roads are in a bit of a state these days even the "good" ones

A few weeks ago the council came around to where i live in Middlesbrough and painted nice white circles around 75% of the potholes in the area then disappeared, they didn't do anything else but the white paint at least gave you chance of avoiding the potholes. Two weeks ago they started to completely resurface all the roads in the area. Not sure where they got the money from but it's nice to drive on smooth tarmac for a change.