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Roads in the U.K. are in such a dire condition that one village has decided to mock them by setting up a "pothole theme park". Pothole Land opened last week near the remote Welsh community of Pontfadog. Visitors to the park get to experience the thrills of driving along one of the UK's thousands of badly potholed roads. Park officials promise the park's potholes are "the deepest, longest and widest in Wales". They added motorists will get to navigate "two kilometres of potholes, with very little actual road to spoil the fun". Some of the potholes that scar the road are almost 50 cm deep. One villager joked that, "they're not potholes, they're bomb craters".
Decades of underinvestment have left British roads in an alarming state of disrepair. It is almost impossible to go on a journey without having to negotiate cratered roads, and thus risk damage to your car. A Pontfadog resident lamented that no repairs had been done to his village's roads in over five years. Another villager complained about repairs to her car. She said: "The cost to our cars is phenomenal." Parts of the road are almost impassable. The conditions are so atrocious that refuse collection drivers often refuse to drive to the village. The U.K. government has set aside £1.6 billion ($1.95 billion) over the next two years to provide "immediate fixes" and to repair seven million potholes.
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