Major roadworks ahead at North Walsham

Drivers face a four-mile diversion around North Walsham for the next six weeks, while a 250m stretch of town centre road is improved.Work starts on Monday upgrading traffic islands and resurfacing around the mini roundabout on Grammar School Road.

Drivers face a four-mile diversion around North Walsham for the next six weeks, while a 250m stretch of town centre road is improved.

Work starts on Monday upgrading traffic islands and resurfacing around the mini roundabout on Grammar School Road.

The first three weeks involves work towards the Lidl supermarket, and the second phase, from August 11, towards the Norwich Road bypass traffic lights.

Throughout the £115,000 scheme, the recommended diversion for traffic, including trucks needing to avoid the town's low bridges, takes vehicles on a 4½ mile round trip via Bengate on the bypass near Worstead.

A four-way traffic light system will operate there to allow lorries to swing around a hairpin bend where the Old Yarmouth Road meets the A149, with a 40mph temporary limit leading up to it.

The works will widen traffic islands at the roundabout to increase safety following approaches by local councillor Virginia Gay and a social club for the blind, said a Norfolk County Council spokesman, who accepted that some local drivers would find other routes through the town rather than the official diversion.

On one evening late in the six week period both sections of the road would be shut for the re-surfacing work.