I wandered lonely as a pothole?

Road maintenance campaign site, Potholes.co.uk, is searching for Britain’s best pothole prose as it continues to highlight the blight of the nation’s poor road surfaces during the UK’s annual “Pothole Season”.

Warranty Direct, which set up Potholes.co.uk two years ago as a sounding board and source of advice for disgruntled motorists, reported a 13 percent year-on-year rise in the number of pothole-related axle and suspension claims after the wintry weather at the start of 2009.

In a play on the traditional 14-line sonnet, the public are being invited to submit 140-character poems about their pothole experiences or outpourings of anger about the state of our roads via Twitter. The top three entries will win an iPod Touch.

Potholes.co.uk will monitor users on Twitter who use the hashtags “#potholes” or “#pothole”. Motorists and road users can also submit their Twitterprose via the potholes.co.uk website itself.

For example, Potholes.co.uk came up with this: “Wheel-breaking, money-sucking, life-sapping episode; All hail #potholes, the black holes of the road.”

“We’re not looking for a Pullitzer Prize winner here, it’s a spot of fun to once again highlight the embarrassing state of our roads,” explains Duncan McClure Fisher, founder of Potholes.co.uk.

The competition comes as motorists are warned to be on their highest alert for craters in the road and other potentially damaging imperfections in the surface, as Britain’s coldest month, January, accelerates the ‘freeze and thaw’ effect following the heavy snowfall and ice the UK has experienced over the last few weeks.

During this phenomenon, water falling as rain or snow seeps into cracks in the road surfaces, freezes and expands, causing a higher than average number of potholes.

Visit potholes.co.uk or follow @potholesuk on Twitter.