Rectangularabout

There is a strange and beautiful place near where we live.

Back in the early 70's, the genius government tried to make two towns, Portadown and Lurgan into one big city called Criagavon. Not a bad idea one might think. Well if they had thought about it a bit longer it may have worked but there were many obstacles.

1. The people of Portadown and Lurgan are more rivals than neighbours.
2. The two towns are five miles apart.
3. There was nothing in between the two towns except fields and farms.
4. There was no need to make them into a city
5. There weren't enough people to live in the new city.

So what they did was, they built miles of roads and hundreds of roundabouts. They build crappy houses really fast and paid some lovely people from Belfast money to come down the road and live in the new houses. Of course the whole thing failed. Portadown people were still proud Portadownians, the people from Lurgan were still Spades and the lovely people from Belfast came down, collectd their money for moving, stayed a few months and headed back up to the big smoke.

Craigavon is still a bit of a road through but some of the beautiful architecture of the 70's still remains.

1. Parkmore.
2. Tullygally Shaps.
3. The magic roundabout with only one entrance and one exit.
4. The balancing lakes.
5. That nice bridge over the carriageway near the shapping centre.

Anyway, the following video sums it up well. I'm not agreeing with everything he says(bearing in mind he has a pint of guiness in his hand). I give you the regtangularabout: