To celebrate the opening of the Weymouth Relief Road and to say farewell to the old section of A354 that is to become a footpath, cycleway and bridleway, this short video has been uploaded.
With many thanks to Max Horton and the Dance family.
You’ll notice that there is no crawler lane as yet and there are few cars about.
In this newly uploaded film, you can see the new view that will greet residents and visitors as they enter Weymouth on the new road.
This journey travels southbound from Ridgeway to the 1,000 space Mount Pleasant park and ride.
This video will take you on a northbound journey from Manor Roundabout to Ridgeway.
Although Icen Lane isn’t yet dug out, and there is a small diversion away from the line of the road, it will give you a good idea of the alignment of the road.
The length of the road will seem a bit deceptive because it’s driven at the site speed limit of 10mph (don’t panic we’ve sped the video up).
As a guide:
Avatar, Alice in Wonderland, and now the relief road burial pit – in 3D!
Oxford Archaeology has pieced together photos of the Ridgeway mass grave to create this 3D image.
At the current exhibition, which ends at 8pm tonight, you can put on 3D specs and see the gruesome discovery.
We spoke to Vix Hughes from Oxford Archaeology at the exhibition in Weymouth to find out more about the significance of the Iron Age settlement discovered at Southdown Ridge.
Vix was in charge of the Southdown excavation, which took place last summer.
Analysis of teeth from the Ridgeway burial pit has revealed that the beheaded men were Scandinavian.
Remains of ten individuals from the execution pit have been painstakingly processed by Dr Jane Evans and Carolyn Chenery at NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory based in Nottingham.
They have concluded that the most likely place of origin for the excuted warriors is somewhere in the Scandinavian countries; Norway and Sweden, or Finland.
Discovered in June 2009, the pit contained 51 skulls placed in one distinct area of the pit, and the bodies discarded haphazardly in another area of the grave.
Final clearance works for the relief road bridleways and cycleways is taking place before the bird nesting season.
Vegetation is checked for wildlife before it is removed.
This injured Barn Owl, which had probably been hit by a vehicle, was rescued during pre-clearance surveys of a hedgerow along the Ridgeway diversionary road, which opened on Monday.
Jurassic Coast Earth Science Advisor Sam Scriven is seen here out on site talking us through the geology of the relief road, and the plans we have to keep the remarkable layers of time exposed in Southdown Ridge visible.
Check out our VodPod account to see another interview with Sam about what geology was found on the relief road.
The lateness of the blog this week should be worth it – six new videos are now available to watch on the dorsetforyou YouTube account.
This one shows the recent construction of the Bincombe underbridge. You may have noticed the cranes sticking out at the hairpin bend as you go into Weymouth, you can now see what they were doing.
