THE proud market town of Holsworthy is a genuinely terrific place with a lot going for it.

It is a place with a mighty fine community, a social and event calendar that puts much bigger towns to envy and is genuinely a decent place to spend a day.

You could go as far as calling it the hidden gem of Devon.

But there is one part of the town that is far less desirable, and it’s something that residents and local figures in the town are limited in their powers to change – its roads.

To cut a long story short, the condition of it’s the roads in and around the town are an absolute disgrace.

They’re so bad that on the other side of the Tamar that when someone says that the Duchy’s roads are the worst, they’re invited to check the roads out in Devon.

Having driven the two main routes from Cornwall towards Holsworthy the different is so stark as soon as you pass the ‘Welcome to Devon’ sign, it is frightening.

Where in Cornwall there are some potholes, on stretches of the A388 between Launceston and Holsworthy, at the Devon side of the road there are significant stretches where it is probably easier to count the parts where there aren’t craters.

The only redeeming feature of the road in question is that it’s in such a bad condition that were this a very long time ago, it would have probably stopped the Roman invasion in its tracks, although it is also true that had the Romans turned up, they’d have built a significantly better one.

Holsworthy residents pay just as much through their nose as elsewhere in taxes to use the cars that are required to access the very basics in life but in return they’re having to use roads that are of a quality that you’d see in a Jeremy Clarkson era Top Gear special with little clue on when things are about to change.

Endless brushing off from Devon County Council about budget constraints are no comfort when the cars that already cost a small fortune to run cost even more because of the repairs needed when a quick drive to the shops has to go over something with more craters than the home of the Clangers.

I find myself wondering if the roads in Exeter would be allowed to get as bad as they currently are in and around Holsworthy.

All of this is before an increasingly worrying trend of road traffic collisions on the A3072. It’s becoming as often as taxes and deaths in Eastenders but behind every collision is not only the impact of the individuals involved, but their loved ones and the community too.

It doesn’t take Jessica Fletcher to understand that with so many incidents in a short time, something is clearly wrong.

We could just ask when it will change, or we can do something. We can’t fix the roads ourselves but we can make as much noise as possible.

Perhaps it’s time to do that in an abundance.