THIS sign has been put up on side of the A48 at Elton Corner between Westbury-on-Severn and Newnham - so why would anyone ignore a warning that the road ahead is closed?

The simple answer is to avoid a long and unnecessary detour around the Forest.

True the road ahead is closed - but it’s at Woolaston some 14 miles away which means closure-free motoring through Newnham, Blakeney, and into Lydney and even Aylburton and Alvington, in fact as far the Wyvern Garage on the A48 at Woolaston..

But this afternoon a member of the Review staff took Gloucestershire County Council and contractors Amey at their word and followed the diversion - so you don’t have to.

The diversion takes you along the A4151 through Littledean, where the diversion helpfully marked.

From there we followed the road to the junction where it splits between the routes to Cinderford and Coleford. We chose to follow the sign for Coleford.

But that’s it. A sign at St White’s Road is the last help you are going to get so after that its either local knowledge, sat nav or a good, old-fashioned map to get you back on course.

Gloucestershire County Council says the signs are for HGV drivers because it is under" a legal obligation to instruct HGV’s to use A road routes, so as to avoid lorries going through areas they shouldn’t be."

On the other side of the Wye, there is a large, bilingual sign at the High Beech roundabout in Chepstow which mentions the magic word ’Stroat’ but suggesting that for anywhere beyond that you should go via Monmouth.

Many locals used the B4226 St Briavels road to get around the bottleneck although that involved long waits to get past cars dropping off at Tutshill School.

We’ll keep a close eye on developments over the next few weeks.