Impressed

Hi Mike,
Lucky you, I don’t like to whinge either but it’s worth me pointing out that I also congratulated the OCC on the work that has been done on the track as it’s a vast improvement from what was there before, OCC have admitted that the contractor “didn’t correctly follow the specification for laying the final top surface” and the punctures don’t lie!
I have cycled along the A417 also and it’s not pleasant, the quiet track/minor road route is so much nicer and so much less dangerous.
I ride a Hybrid with fairly chunky wheels and in the 6 months prior to the stone chips being laid I hadn’t had a single puncture, since laying the stones 5 punctures in 4 days, so whinging justified I think!
Hope you continue along this extremely pleasant route without any incident.

Bear in mind some of the punctures from that stretch don’t become apparent straight away, mine have mainly been become so when getting back on the bike to ride home so it might be worth giving your tyres the once over before heading back rather than potentially getting a surprise half way home.

All the best,

Tom

Hi,
I’m new in the Forum, just moved in Wantage and I’m trying to cycle daily from Wantage to Diamond. I simply love the path through Lockinge, Ginge and Harwell. I bought a bike before moving here to make sure my gear was fit. I cycled up to now a total of 7 times and I got 2 punctures. I was shocked by the statistics of this (and related costs) and then a friend pointed me to this site/forum. So it looks like this last bit of path behind Harwell is systematically puncturing my tyres. I already ordered super-reinforced tyres, lets see how that works out.
As ezroller pointed out, the punctures don’t show right away. The first was on the way back and I had to walk home from East Ginge. The second time I found the tyre flat when leaving work. In both cases a small yellowish shard punctured my tyres.

Since this path is new, I don’t suppose it will be fixed pretty soon. Question: how about putting a warning sign up? At the moment, that seems to me as the quickest solution.

However, one needs probably to contact the OCC. Any idea how to do that?

Sorry, I’m new and I rely on this route…

Cheers and thanks for the website!

Helder

Questions:

Hi Helder,

As you may have seen already the council have placed a sign at each end of the dreaded stretch warning cyclists of punctures. It’s good to see they are fully aware and hopefully this means they are planning to sort it out quickly.

If you still wish to contact the council then Lewy posted some email addresses here http://www.harbug.org.uk/?topic=route-upgrade-update/#post-2764