Blacktop for Nawlocka

Earlier this week there's been a significant amount of heavy plant moving up and down ul. Trombity; graders, rollers, aggregate trucks. I need to know what's happening. So this evening my wife and I set off down the road and turn left into ul. Nawlocka (pron. 'Nuv-WOTS-kuh') to discover that it's getting a proper surface. (The asphalt has yet to be laid).

I remember the day the asphalt was laid on ul. Gajdy, the street where we rented a house when we first moved to Poland. It was like the Allied army coming to liberate us from the mud, potholes, bumps, rocks and dust of an unmade road. But there's a downside too - soon ul. Gajdy needed speedbumps to slow down the short-cutting rat-runners. We checked the far end of Nawlocka; no sign of any new road surface yet - it's still a muddy track. As long as this new surface is nothing more than a spur off ul. Trombity giving local residents easier access to their houses - OK. But should asphalt get laid all the way to ul. Karczunkowska, this will become a rat-run. Tarmacking over dirt-track is a step towards encroaching suburbanisation; it has its pluses and its minuses.

Updated June 2008: No asphalt, only paving blocks, and only half way up Nawłocka. Traffic growing nevertheless.

There's nothing to do but record for posterity (compare with picture from April 2007)

We then discover than ul. Dumki, coming off Trombity across the road from Nawlocka, has also been hardened and awaits asphalt. We walk to the end of the hardened surface; thankfully it does not go right to the end of Dumki, where it joins Kórnicka. Again, it's just a spur for the benefit of local householders. The photo (below) shows where the asphalt will end and where the dirt track begins. To quote Betjeman again, "grass triumphs, and I must say, I'm rather glad'.