The road goes ever on

Not far from the office there is a small, potholed little road that doesn't even classify as a B, called Milton Hill. The main road, the A4130, takes you down the eponymous hill to the A34 and the Milton interchange. Milton Hill (the road) turns east off the main road, then takes you down the hill, parallel to the A4130, to a modern housing estate called Milton Heights. I've never quite been sure why Milton Heights is there. It seems to be an attempt by Didcot to plant a colony to the west of the A34, a bit like Europeans planted small towns in North America as a basis for claiming the entire continent for their king/queen/Pope.

But I digress. Half a mile away, the other side of the A34, is the village of Milton. You would never think to connect the rutty little not-B-road and Milton High Street, still not exactly the Appian Way but much better looked after and an important access route to the industrial powerhouse of Milton Park.

But get this. I was looking at an old, early 1900s map of Oxfordshire, and Milton Hill and Milton High Street are actually the same road. In the old days, to get up Milton Hill, that was the route you took. Then some clown built the mighty A34 and the entire middle section of the road was replaced by the grandeur that is the Milton interchange.

But it takes a lot to kill a road. It has been reduced to two unconnected stubs, but it's way older than the A34 and I have no doubt will outlast it. Perhaps our civilisation must fall and a new one arise, but I am sure that road will one day be connected again, a vital arterial route in the heart of Oxfordshire, and generations as yet unborn will be heading up and down Milton Hill, perhaps looking (if they have time) at the sad remains of the A34 and wondering at the people who built it.