Roadworks GRRRRRRRRRR

I have 2 routes home from Chiswick. Round the North Circular and up the M1, but the North Circular is normally full when I try to join, or wriggle across to Greenford, join the A40/M40 out to the M25 and round to the M1 - 8 miles longer but quicker than the North Circular when it's normal or worse.

This week roadworks began which has blocked off the A40/M40/M25 route for the next 15 weeks. That made the A40 being closed on Monday and Wednesday (flooding and an accident) relatively irrelevant, apart from increasing the traffic on the North Circular/M1 as people diverted round the closed A40 to get to Birmingham etc.

So it's been the North Circular, but for 2 nights out of the 4 that has also been a bit of a mess. Wednesday with the added traffic from the A40 you then had the obligatory shunt or breakdown on Staples Corner which brought the whole thing to a halt, and then on Thursday - a burst water main on the North Circular outside Ikea, coupled with broken traffic lights in Ealing. I managed to bypass the tailback (Ikea to the Chiswick Roundabout), and arrived at the North Circular in this queue, waiting to turn onto the North Circular and pass the roadworks. In the inset you can see the water coming out of a drain - presumably downstream of the burst. It only took me 45 minutes to travel the 1/2 mile length of this tailback, about the same as it would have taken to get to Hangar Lane, yet alone from there to Ikea. Ikea is the blue building in the background.

I would say I'm hoping for a better journey home on Friday, but the lane will probably still be closed then, and it's Friday.