At the end of my most recent mapping session in Gedling, Nottingham I mapped Albert Street & Victoria Street. It was only right at the very end that I got the point (Victoria & Albert: geddit?). It is immediately obvious from the state of it’s road that Victoria Street is unadopted (a private road), but I was surprised to discover that the end of Albert Street is also unadopted. My goodness, but it is confusing…

This photo shows not just the state of Victoria Street (it is the road in the foreground) but also the locked-gate that lorry drivers keep trying to use to cut through from Westdale Lane East (at the end of the service road) to Main Road (well behind the camera) (I’ve done my damnedest to make sure that that does not happen with OSM):–

Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of the next bit (22 March 2017 correction:– got one now), and even the Mighty Google does not show it since their street-view is dated 2014 & thus pre-dates the street re-tarmacing that makes all this obvious…

It is fairly easy to identify an unadopted road in Britain; it’s residents are responsible for upkeep of the road (unlike most roads which are adopted by the local council, which also then maintains the roads & charges for that service) and they are normally cul-de-sacs. That often means that, if the road is at all old, that the road is very rough indeed. In the Thorneywood neighbourhood of Nottingham, Thorneywood Rise is both unadopted & on a steep slope. The tarmacadam upon it’s road is immaculate. However, that is because the road used to be so foul that council wagons were suffering weekly damage whilst emptying the bins, and the Council eventually threw in the towel & re-surfaced it at zero cost to the residents.

Sure enough, Victoria Street meets both of these criteria, being both a cul-de-sac & as rough as can be. At one end is the gate (see picture above) and at the other is Albert Street. At this point it all gets a little quasi.

Numbers 10 & 11 Albert Street are each part of a semi-detached house which faces down Victoria Street (the houses on that side of Albert Street are numbered consecutively, whilst those on the opposite side are odd/even; this is a very confused road). 10 Albert Street stands on the adopted part of the street, whilst 11 Albert Street is on the unadopted bit. The road is very bumpy outside number 11 but very smooth outside number 10. However, it is only smooth on it’s side of the road…

Opposite 10 Albert Street is the side of 1 Victoria Street. That house stands on an unadopted road, and be damned if the council are going to tarmac it’s half of the road! So, 10 Albert Street’s side of the road (LHS in photo below) is nice & smooth, whilst the other side (RHS) is most bumpy:–

Welcome to England.

Update 7 July 2022

Mapillary has changed it’s download URLs & therefore all links within my diaries that used a Mapillary download URL in the old format are broken (the Mapilliary map URLs, which show a photo within the context of an OSM map, have also changed and are redirected via a HTTP/1.1 302 Found, but the download URL hostname no longer exists and gives a “No address associated with hostname” DNS error). I’m slowly going through to update them. The new URLs are terrifyingly long, but show OK on my screen (and I hope also on yours).