A487

The A487 is the trunk road from Fishguard to Bangor. It runs right past our house (or at least the end of our track), and so is very familiar to us for local journeys by bus or car, or occasionally on foot or cycle, and also for the start and end of longer trips. For ten years from 1994 to 2004 it was our sons' route to school - first one way to the primary school in Dinas, then the other way to the secondary school in Fishguard.

For the past ten years it has also been my route to my job in Lancashire, normally as far as Cross Foxes just south of Dolgellau when I pick up the A470 and the A494. Having left Preston at the end of July, I returned to meet friends and colleagues this week, and although I travelled there by a different route I came back on the old road. I stopped to stretch my legs and was struck by the directness and simplicity of this sign. Unusually for a road sign in Wales, it's only bilingual as a whole, not in its parts. Talybont and Llandre only have Welsh names, Bow Street only an English name.

Trunk roads in Britain seem to have nothing of the glamour that across the sea inspires songs like Route 66 or Highway 61, although the redoubtable John Otway made quite a fist of it with A413 Revisited. One day maybe someone will do the same for the A487, bilingually of course.