Dobwalls' by-pass

It's taken years but Dobwalls is now by-passed. Visitors to south-east Cornwall during high summer probably don't have very good memories of Dobwalls. It's a village that straddles the A38 just west of Liskeard and due to its position at the western end of the Liskeard bypass it became a bottle neck to avoid. And the residents of Dobwalls certainly didn't appreciate being prisoners in their own homes.

From Easter to late September, Saturday is known as change over day. One lot of visitors leaves and another lot arrives and gridlock often ensues. Landlords of B&Bs and self-catering barn conversions are reluctant to let their properties for part weeks during the season so the ritual of change over day and manic chambermaids cleaning rooms and changing bed linen seems to be here to stay. Only by camping can this lemming like ritual be avoided.

Cornwall relies on an effective road system otherwise those that support its main industry will stay away. Effectively that road system is needed for just one day a week – change over day – but on that day it is needed really badly. Building new roads always attracts opposition and sometimes I agree that they unnecessary and removing one bottle neck just creates another further on.

But Dobwalls was always different. The A390 branches off south here and siphons off a proportion of the holiday traffic. The Eden Project has been credited with regenerating a vast part of the old China Clay country and many people now holiday in and around Snozzle, spelt St Austell. By the time the A38 enters the beautiful but twisting Glyn Valley as it heads for Bodmin, it’s lost half its traffic.

In years gone by, just for change over day, a new road layout around Dobwalls would mysteriously spring up over night. A triangular one way system between Dobwalls, East Taphouse and Doubleboys (spelt Double Boys) would frighten the traffic lights into submission and allow the use both lanes of the single carriageway road. I have happy memories of pulling out into the right hand lane on blind corners, which provoked surprising agitation in girlfriends from out of the county. (It was big and it was clever but I’ve grown out of that sort of thing nowadays.) Any temptation to use the circuit for speed testing or racing was always tempered by a 40 mph limit and the presence of traffic cops.

And to get to this one way system from the east you had to climb the hill up into Dobwalls (avoiding the overheating cars with caravans) and wind your way through the village to the traffic lights where the two A roads met.

This worked for a while but what the Dobwalloons really wanted was a bypass. The campaign went on for years until one glorious day it was announced that Dobwalls would at last get one. Then nothing happened and continued to do so for years. But inexplicably, work began and now the bypass is opened.

It's a work of considerable engineering. The old road was steep and twisting but the new one gracefully arches up the hill on a massive embankment created out of all the rock and earth they had to carve away from the summit of the hill. A roundabout joins the two main roads so there may still be some hold ups at peak times but it's far better than the old traffic lights for keeping the traffic moving.

As a tribute to the workers of contractors Interserve, the Dobwalloons burst into poetry. Click on the pic for a larger image but for the lazy among you here is a transcript of an appreciation of Dobwalls' beloved and long awaited bypass, coutesy of DIG - Dobwalls Into Gardening.

Now the road is almost done
And the men will soon be gone
Diggers and lorries of Interserve
Have shovelled and shifted tone of earth
They moved it here, they moved it there.
They moved it blooming well everywhere.
They worked for all they are worth
Thank you all at Interserve.


The new bypass hasn’t been fully tested yet but, as the finishing touches are put in place, it looks and works pretty well. Construction traffic made things worse for the Dobwalloons for a while and some complained but this wayside tribute to the construction workers caught my eye and at least explained to the waiting traffic queued up in the village what the hold up was about and that things would be better next year. Long may it continue to make a difference to road users and residents alike.