A recent correspondent to your Saturday Telegraph letters harshly criticised the roads in Northumberland. I drive hundreds of miles each week here, where we have an excellent system of uncluttered roads which did indeed take a hammering over the last extremely hard winter. As soon as the snow eventually cleared there was immediate evidence of the worst of the potholes being filled in and this has been followed up by the relaying of considerable stretches of road (e.g. A696) with remarkable speed and efficiency with minimal disruption producing superb results. It is gratifying to see such a tangible result for one's taxes. Understandably it cannot all be done in five minutes.