Inner Ring Road

Speaking as someone who cycles everywhere it's still quite entertaining today However cycling means I can use all the short cuts and miss most of the traffic, in fact the easiest way to go to the city centre is often by bike (provided you don't live too far away) and use the lockable cages in the Barracks car park

What a terrifically sad photo Deano - great find

What is sad is that a lot of the land around that area is still empty, just in use as temporary car parks (for decades) or cluttered up with empty buildings or cheap housing.

The Ring Road although difficult to drive on for outsiders is a well designed and well built road. The council it seems would have it demolished, With talk a few years ago of lowering the section between junction 1 at Foleshill Road and junction 3 for Sky Blue Way, and more recently talk of doing away with junction 6 at the railway station when Friargate is built.

I think everyone would have applauded if the council had considered removing the ring road

if they did remove the ring road we`d probably end up with even more empty spaces for decades

The ring road comes in for a lot of criticism, particularly on this forum. I feel that is not entirely fair given that we now have five decades of hindsight from which to benefit. The road was the planner's reaction to the post war boom in private car ownership, yet ironically it was the workers of Coventry that were producing those vehicles in such vast numbers. Indeed the car is also to blame for the demise of the city centre, losing out to out-of-town shopping parks that can offer ample free parking. Ring Road history

Thanks to Paul Michael Kennelly from the True Coventarian FB page - amazing rare shot of Queens Road and Stoneleigh Terrace just about to disappear as Ringway St Patricks materialises.

"Ringway Queens"!

I never know where one stops and the next one starts Dutchy! Theres some interesting info here (Apologies if this has already been posted). "The section from Parkside through to Coventry station [junctions 4-6, the part of the circle that is bent inward] was originally intended to be further out so that the station was within the ring road (I met someone who used to work in the City Surveyors and he had seen the original drawings). The Council at the time was Conservative run and the proposed route was changed to prevent councillors having the road in their back gardens and disturbing King Henry School! The route was changed but the calculations done above were not redone to compensate, hence this section always feels a bit more scary at speeds above 40mph!"

From a driver's point of view, and somebody who liked challenges, I found the RR to be great fun. Getting onto it was like coming out of the pits onto a racetrack, and the roller coaster nature of parts of it were an absolute joy. It was like a mixture of the Blackpool Pleasure beach 'Grand National' roller coaster and the Monaco circuit, plus it made my business incursions into and around the centre way easier than they would have otherwise been.

If Coventry of the future is only famous for its ring road, that will be better than a slow slide into terminal obscurity. Stop picking on it. It is one of Coventry's best features..

When you're living on t'other side of world, then it probably is, to you

Another fabulous picture, but I am leaving it for close inspection as parked in the offices I am sure that there is a very rare Vanguard Phase 1 estate car. Can anyone with better eyesight confirm please.

You must have good eyesight Philip, what I can see is an Mgb just like the one I,ll be driving to Le Mans tommorow,