Express & Star features writer Mark Andrews tours the area for the worst potholes!
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00:00Hello it's Mark Andrews from the X-Pleasant Star. We're in the car park of the
00:04Mander Centre and we're going to take you and today I'm going to take you on a
00:08safari but it's not going to be an ordinary safari. No I'm going to take you
00:13on a tour of some of the finest potholes of the West Midlands. It's going to be a
00:18belter I promise you. Join me let's get in the brown Batmobile and let's take
00:21you for the spin. We're just driving along the Wolverhampton Ring Road which is
00:32obviously one of the busiest roads in the city and you can just see here the
00:37carriageways cracking up a little bit here and there. We're just coming off the
00:42Penn Road Island.
00:48You can see here the markings are a bit faded and some more cracks appearing here.
00:56You can see here there's a lot of potholes in the surface here. It's a bit bumpy.
01:06We're heading into Great Brickhill Street here and the
01:14approach route to the new Sainsbury's which is one of the biggest supermarkets
01:20in Wolverhampton and I'm told as we get into Alexandra Street it's got some of
01:28the biggest potholes in the city as well.
01:44You can just see if you turn in here the road is really rough and bumpy.
01:52Yeah, that is bumpy, that is bumpy.
01:58We're in Alexandra Street Wolverhampton just outside the new Sainsbury's.
02:05We're in Alexandra Street Wolverhampton just outside the new Sainsbury's.
02:12I think as one of the biggest shops in Wolverhampton this must be one of the
02:17busiest access roads in the city and just look at the state of the potholes
02:23here, the pavements here. All this rubble here, there's just a line of them here and you
02:28see there's probably more actual material in the gutters than there actually is
02:33covering the road surface. Well that was a fun start to our tour, now we're off to
02:42hit the roads of the West Midlands and look out for some more some more
02:47beautiful potholes. The pothole tour starts here.
03:04Just on the ring road here and again there's quite a few potholes along here.
03:13Yeah, a pleasant one there isn't there? That's quite a big one and some more
03:18there. Van just went over a bit of a bump there, a few cracking up here.
03:34I'm just here now in Northway Sedgley. Now this road isn't too bad but I believe
03:48that if you turn down a lot of the smaller roads off here there are
03:53some quite shocking road surfaces along some of the
03:59side roads off here so let's take a look.
04:13Well let's try this one, Eves Court Drive. As soon as you go in there's a bit of a bump
04:20there and you can see there's cracks along here. Oh look, look at this, this is
04:30quite bad look at all this in here. Holes, one, two, three, four, I've tried to patch it
04:35and the patches have come off. And some more here, these are quite big
04:42ones as well, one, two, three, four, quite deep as well. Well I've just got out the car
04:49and as you can see they've tried to patch the road here and potholes have
04:55appeared in the patch so they've patched up the patch and still there's even more
05:01potholes have appeared at the side of the patches so I think I have to patch
05:06the patch of the patch. We've now just walked a few yards across the road into
05:13Eversley Grove and as you can see the potholes here are even worse. I mean the
05:18ones we just saw across the road in Eves Court Drive were probably potholes, I think
05:22this is like a small swimming pool this one is. I'm just looking at it, I'd say it's
05:27about what three foot by 18 inches across and there's another one over there
05:32that's not quite as big but it's a lot deeper, it's probably about six, eight inches deep that
05:36one is there so it's pretty bad here.
05:42Now so far as you can see we've been down a few roads, there's been a few potholes, you
05:47might well be saying well there's lots of places like that so the next stop off
05:52on our pothole safari is going to be what I would describe as the pothole
05:58Riviera of the Black Country. You've got some real beauties along this road.
06:04So here I'm just turning into Langlandsloeve, Sedgley and even as you're
06:19turning here you can see all the pavements cracking up. This bit's not too
06:27bad. There you see, yeah there's a lot there, that's bumpy. One, two, three here.
06:42More here.
06:47Slow down. Oh hang on, this is a bad one.
06:58Just stop and get out here and have a look.
07:03Well I think if you're coming on a pothole safari and you've only got time to
07:08see one pothole, this is the one you want to see in Langlandsloeve. It's a beauty
07:14isn't it, it's one of the, you can see all the stone coming through the surface here,
07:18it's really deep and really rough. You might notice looking around one or two
07:22of the houses here, they've got lots of 4x4 cars, I think this is
07:26the reason why. We've just been driving down Cotworth End Road and it isn't
07:33half a teeth-chattering drive down there, just look at all these cracks here
07:37and look at this here, oh it's a good six, eight inches deep I would say that is
07:43and certainly you get a bump there and we just ended up sinking down a ditch in
07:47the side of the road as we finished, as we parked up. So we come to the end of
07:53our pothole tour and we finish up here with the car sunken down
08:00into a ditch at the side of the road.