Drivers using the A346 near Marlborough on the edge of Swindon have been warned of a diversion measuring 50.44 kilometres, put in place to get around a road closure that covers, in total, 730 metres.
Wiltshire Council says the closure affects Port Hill, starting around 370 metres north of its junction with North View Place and running for a further 730 metres, from Tuesday 6 October. The works, described as urgent Bobcat patching and associated repairs carried out by contractor MGroup, will take place over two nights between 7pm and 11.59pm. The official diversion runs via the A346, Bath Road, the A4 through Marlborough, Beckhampton Road, the A4361, the B4006 Pipers Way, East on the A4259, south on the A419, round the M4 Junction 15 roundabout and back down the A346 to Ogbourne Maizey. Access for residents and businesses along the closed section will, the council says, be maintained where possible.
Road users attempting the diversion are advised to bring snacks, a second tank of petrol, and a general willingness to see parts of Wiltshire they had previously only heard about from relatives who live there.
One.Network, which measured the route, describes it simply as 50.44 kilometres, a figure that works out at roughly 69 metres of diversion for every metre of actual closure. Local motoring groups have pointed out that this is, mathematically, less a detour and more a short holiday with a destination you never wanted to visit.
"In my day if the road was shut you just mounted the verge and got on with it," said Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old. "Ron reversed round a closed bit of the Wroughton bypass once in 1979 and nobody batted an eyelid. Fifty kilometres? That's Weston-super-Mare. I'm not driving to Weston-super-Mare to get to the chemist on Port Hill."
Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the closure had given him a new way of thinking about small problems. "Seven hundred and thirty metres, that's basically the length of our warehouse yard, and they're sending people fifty kilometres round it," he said. "That's exactly what happened when Julie from accounts lost her stapler. Took us three weeks and a full departmental restructure to find it was in her other drawer. Sometimes the detour is the point, if you think about it strategically."
Wiltshire Council has defended the scale of the diversion, noting that the works are necessary in the interests of public safety and that the closure will only last two nights, which is, by the diversion's own internal logic, roughly 25.22 kilometres per night.
A council spokesperson said access would be maintained for residents and businesses where possible, a phrase understood locally to mean anyone living on the closed stretch should expect to become, briefly, an island.
Brenda said she had already worked out her own route. "I shall be getting the bus, like Ron always said you should. Mind you, knowing First Bus, that'll probably go via Bath and all."
The 730 metres of Port Hill under repair, for what it is worth, declined to comment on becoming the smallest thing in Wiltshire currently requiring the largest workaround.