Air Ballon Roundabout A417 Cheltenham at Birdlip

by potty421

04 Feb 2010

I was driving to Gloucester with a friend in my newly acquired MGF. The car was in immaculate condition with only 13900 miles on the clock. In a queue of traffic at the Air Balloon roundabout I pulled out onto the roundabout at about 5 mph and the car felt and sounded as if it had run over a dustbin and dropped into a hole. I exclaimed 'What the h.. was that?' and my passenger said, 'You have just hit a massive pothole' It must have been obscured by the large vehicle in front, and concentrating on the traffic from the right I did not see it. I had already gone over it and had to drive on across the roundabout to avoid traffic from my right. It was not safe to stop in the middle of the busy roundabout. The car started to pull over to the right so I pulled in and found that the tyre was flat and the alloy wheel was badly scuffed along roughly a third of the rim. The breakdown service was called and replaced the damaged wheel and tyre with the spare. I drove to Cheltenham and had the wheel and tyre checked. The tyre was replaced and the tracking had been badly knocked out of alignment. The passenger is a witness to the incident which cost me £137.12 to put right. It was too dangerous to take photographs due to the volume of traffic.