I've been cycling to work for some years now. One day, I hope to get there! Skidoosh! By far the worst section, apart from Valley Road hill and the narrow & windy stretch by the golf course, is the unmade road by Dobbs Lane at the start/end of the Grange Farm cycle path in Kesgrave. Why, maybe I mentioned it back in April 2007, in which there was speculative talk of it all being fixed.

Never happen, I thought. Meantime, all of us -- cyclists, schoolkids, parents, pedestrians -- will continue to battle our way between cavernous potholes (when it's dry) and muddy puddles (when it's wet). Not much fun in the daylight, even less fun of an early winter's evening with zero streetlighting.

Waddya know, it has been. Fixed, that is. Once the clocks did whatever they do in spring, out came the boys in the hard hats for 12 weeks of proper work. During which time I largely avoided it and stuck to the main road.

In the last couple of weeks, they've tidied up and moved on, bish-bosh. Job is very much a good 'un. Those 300m or so have literally been transformed. The track of horror has become a terrain of harmony. Hard to get across how much better it is. Coasting along that baby's bottom of a boulevard, I feel the need to stop, get off and lay down, spreading myself like a tarmac angel. Obviously I don't do that; that'd be crazy.

Nonetheless, it's wonderful.