I do miss the superb French roads in the Limousin. Of course traffic was far lighter but it was extraordinary how often they were resurfaced.
The roads in towns and villages had a different budget so were almost invariably not as good. My experiences are now rather dated, it must be said. I last cycled in France in 2022 over the Alpes, but haven't been in the Limousin since 2019.
York city roads have become appalling over winter.
Having spent just over 6 weeks stuck in Oxfordshire this winter I was horrified at the quantity of traffic (and most of that time Oxford was properly flooded as well). Rural roads in the Limousin don't start to compare, even though they don't get any maintenance worth speaking of. When the contractors get going, as in a lot of villages (and don't forget, an english rural village is about the size of a major town in Limousin; imagine a world with only one of your villages per county!) the quality of the work - and even if it gets finished in a respectable time frame - depends a lot on financing (and whether the deputé or his mates have property near by - financing again in a sort of way!). Javerlhac (pays Nontronnais, Dordogne not Haute Vienne if you want to split hairs) is a mess because the town didn't have the financing to finish burying cables and redoing the drains.
There are a lot of rural villages and small towns that have simply done complete make-overs (with associated traffic calming features) rather than repairing roads. This causes inconveniences to the local traffic that the majority of english councils cannot allow (if they want to stay in power) but seems to be tolerated (within limits and levels of grumbling) in most of rural France. Really it's simply not possible to compare France and UK on road wear. However there are a number of our (french) roads that are living on borrowed time - and in Limoges that time has already been used up (and I can't really blame the conservative mayor, his socialist predecessor was in power a long time and was no better!)
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