Any question answered...

Marvelous. Thanks.

This is what all the others have...

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This is mine. Good call ie street view. Even if they didn't install a new flappy one here, you'd have to ask why, if it originally had an old style one, and all the other ones got new ones, they didn't. Will see what LCC say tomorrow.

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Yep, Mrs Hammer has popped several car tyres on similar.

Doesn’t look like it been filled, as there’s a bit of a crater left as they’re not installed that deeply.

However it very clearly been tidied up given the lack of brick around the edge.

I've got hayfever for the first time ever. My eyes went all puffy which is how I knew it's not just a cold.

There's what looks like two holes of a similar bcd to the other ones base, but they're full of road muck. Tbh I don't know if there ever was one there, but if there wasn't I can't imagine what the logic was.

Take a gazillion photos - go back at night with a bike, take some videos.

Take a gazillion photos - go back at night with a bike, take some videos.

...and then hammer froze sausages into the hole where the marker post should have been?

Time to deploy something long and spiky and your battery powered Dyson, to make those holes look like holes - or would that be seen as tampering with the evidence?
TBH, why would that area be free of setts, and tarmac-filled, if it wasn't for the installation of a flexy bollard - as it is in the examples you've shown in other build-outs?
Bit of a coincidence - No?
'Hope your friend heals swiftly.

Between the hook and IJsselmeer they get proper aggro if you use the road though.

What's an ok and inexpensive light that will enable me to navigate country roads at night?

I don't plan to make a habit of riding in the night but need to next weekend.

That’s probably because there’s a gazillion good cyclepaths between those places. People will only get aggro if you’re cycling on the road while there’s clearly a cyclepath on your left. If not they’re asshats/ignore

Mostly ignore. On a road bike with 28mm or less, the bricklaid paths are boneshattering. Felt like paris-roubaix.

Weird - eyes are fine (does me wearing contact lenses affect this). Nabbed a couple of my colleagues Benadryl antihistamines a few days ago which didn’t improve things :/

Will give those cheap wilko antihistamines a go and see what happens.

Not sure you'd be able to get hold of one by next weekend but I really like my Gaciron 400 lumen light. Think it's a cateye knockoff but it's really bright with a good beam pattern. Been using it all winter in all weathers without issue.

Between this and cold weather I get about 3 weeks a year of just being otter.

It's against the law in the Netherlands to ride in the carriageway if there's a parallel cycle path.

Right, it seems as if the history in this place is a bit of a mess. Thanks to Greenbank for looking at StreetView.

Too much to say, so just some bullet points (hope they help):

. This may be useful--it's guidance for the use of such bollards, including lighting conditions. You should read at least the short section on build-outs:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/244067/traffic-bollards-low-level.pdf

. I don't know if the build-outs always featured the illuminated bollards, but if they didn't, I'm sure they would have been added fairly quickly (although, as the old style ones required connection to mains electricity, it would be surprising if that had to be added later, as it can be a fairly difficult job). Adding the bollards didn't absolve the scheme from being poorly-designed, however--it's a bit like the old Personal Protective Equipment issue. If you need PPE to be 'safe', something has gone wrong at a higher level. Illuminated bollards are a bit like that--you can see it in how often they get knocked down, which has even led to the invention of newer catchily-named (solar-powered) Retroreflective Self-righting Bollards (RSRBs) (see link above).

. By and large, it's not a good idea to stick things into the middle of the carriageway (e.g., where there are pedestrian 'refuges' they're often a fudge when a proper pedestrian crossing should have been provided). All these additions don't solve the original problem.

. In my view and that of quite a few traffic engineers I've spoken to, 'keep right' bollards should never be necessary, even less so than 'keep left' bollards. Nonetheless, they often get installed. Here, it highlights that there are serious problems with the build-outs--under-use of the car parking spaces (not a problem in itself, of course) combined with poor street lighting and undoubtedly high speeds along this stretch.

. It would be worth finding out why the bollard is missing where you crashed. Locals might remember whether and when there was a crash that took one out (try talking to dog-walkers or knock on nearby doors; the people working in the MOT centre might know).

. You'd expect that location to have been included in the replacement programme when the old bollards were removed and the new ones put in. The new ones don't need to be connected to the mains, being solar-powered, so installing them is a fairly straightforward job. They shouldn't be destroyed too easily, although obviously can be, e.g. if a car comes to rest on top of one. While they don't need expensive electrical work underneath, they're fairly expensive and perhaps there wasn't a budget to replace it when one was destroyed. Of course, it's perfectly possible that it was forgotten in the replacement programme, that one was stolen (no, I can't imagine it, either) or, simply, that the Council hadn't been notified of its disappearance yet.

. Amazingly, there are two metal bollards on a build-out further on (at the junction with Manship Road), just after the bus stop. This whole street hasn't had much TLC for a long time--virtually every feature you see there is badly outdated. My favourite features are those amazing (and completely ineffective) pretend Belisha Beacons on the central islands.

. Just speculation, but: The old Halfords site across the street is now a development site. I have no idea if work has already started there, but if the driver of a heavy vehicle accessing the development started the turn early by swinging left across that bollard, they may well have knocked it out. Having said that, I've just looked at StreetView again and it seems a/the bollard has been missing since at least September 2014.

For real? Now I know! It was only a couple bad stretches of brick path.

.

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I’m dropping a wheel set off at my LBS to be trued.

Should I remove the tyres and tubes or is it ok to leave them on?

My Western Digital 'mybook' 500GB external hard disk is really playing up. Have run checkdisc on it a few times but it either says it hasn't worked or it just hangs. All the files are there, but only some of them can be viewed/opened, the others you can see, but it's as if they are some unknown, low-size file type. Other files names have become strings of random characters.

Question one: Any advice on how to fix it, or if there is someone I can pay to come over and fix it?

Question two: Hoping that I can recover everything, this motivates me to get a proper back-up solution in place. Any advice? What would be good is an external SSD that can be automatically mirrored online. The drawback is that I have very low upload speeds, but I suppose I could just leave it on for a week or so for the initial upload.

While they will very likely be able to true with a spoke key, if any spokes/nipples need to be replaced, they will thank you for having removed tyre, tube and rim tape. Also, easier to check roundness sans-tyre.

When you say "fix it" I assume you mean recover the data. I wouldn't carry on using a potentially knackered drive.

I've used ddrescue https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ with some success before. You'll need a space at least as big as the HDD you're recovering from to create an image of the drive.

I use Onedrive for backing stuff up but that's because I need Office. I pay about £40 a year for 1TB. Whatever you use, it's worth looking at what you want to upload and your upload speed and seeing how long it may take. It could well be much more than a week, I worked out to back all my stuff up would be 8 months. http://www.meridianoutpost.com/resources/etools/calculators/calculator-file-download-time.php