Fixing A Hole

The life and times of the great British roadworks, and those who dig and despair of them.

Reporter Sara Parker travels from Cumbria to London via the M25.

She’s seeking those for whom a freshly-dug hole in the road is a wonder and a delight but a source of desperation for road users and dwellers.

Copenhagen Street is allegedly Britain's most dug-up thoroughfare. It's in North London, and is regularly the subject of the attentions of gas, electricity and cable TV folk who just love to trouble its tarmac. Sara hails a taxi cab there, where its driver actually lives and feels the rock-and-roll ride across the patchwork quilt of the capital's roads with an expert's commentary in her ears.

Meanwhile, in the depths of a Lake District winter, Sara goes out on call with the boys from the blackstuff as they try to keep the hilly roads from cracking in the frost and being washed away by torrents.

She joins the men training to dig a decent hole at a hole-in-the-road training centre whose instructor in his spare time loves nothing more than ballroom-dancing the night away while Strictly come digging by day.

And out on the M25, the cones are out in force to protect the workforce from the speeding traffic.

Producer: Simon Elmes

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2008.