Lost in a maze of backroads.
This story happened on: 02/08/2015
On Sunday the 19th of July, my wife and I left the West Ayton site near Scarborough with our caravan, a Bailey Senator, to travel on the A170 towards the A1 on which we intended to travel over to the Lake District. We had been away from home for 2 weeks by this time on our 4 week summer holiday and West Ayton was our 4th site on the trip. (A very good site I might add). On approaching the area of Sproxton we were informed by signage that caravans were prohibited from travelling through Sutton Bank which we were ignorant of, but that there is a detour which we should follow. How many other people know this? We followed this detour through country lanes barely suitable for large caravans religiously following the detour signs. When we arrived in a small village called Ampleforth we were met with cones and barriers at a road closure sign right in the middle of the main street, and the information that it would be closed for the next 4 weeks! We had no option but to turn left down Station Road although there was no 'detour' indicating we should do this.
The next three quarters of an hour were a nightmare for all caravanners. We roamed across a very rural landscape of blind bends, tight narrow lanes and blind summits with little signage. Needless to say, the detour signs had dried up in the village. The AA road atlas was of little help showing a maze of criss-crossing unclassified roads until we were completely lost. We fortunately came across a group of men who were monitoring a bicycle race, and they gave us directions on how to reach the A19. We eventually came across it at a place called Carlton Husthwaite. If you know where this is, you will see just how lost we were. What annoys us so much is not the fact of the detour, but the fact that someone has made the decision to close a road that is part of a diversion, and never thought to create a new diversion, but left us (and how many others), to wander through a landscape we know nothing about and has almost no detail on a standard road map. We would be interested to hear other caravanners comments on this, as the experience left us very angry and frustrated. So much so that I e-mailed North Yorkshire Council and told them what I thought of there foresight in planning for road closures.
brue
Motorhomer