DRIVERS heard roads “peeling like sticky tape” as the scorching heatwave caused tarmac to “melt”.

Chris Groves told the Gazette he was driving on Bures Road, between Earls Colne and Bures, when he noticed “large lumps” of the road had “melted” and cracked in the heat.

The damage was caused to the road as temperatures soared to near 40C on Tuesday.

“It was very bad from the village hall to just past the big farm on the right, but the whole road all the way to Bures was tacky,” said Chris.

Gazette:

“It had melted into large lumps, the noise when you drove over it was crazy.

“It was like unrolling sticky tape the whole way from Bures to Earls Colne – the road is trashed.”

Major roads were also hit by the heat, with delays on the A12 at around 5pm on Tuesday after “damage” was caused to the concrete road surface.

A National Highways spokesman said: “We were notified of some damage to the concrete road surface on the south-bound side of the A12 between junctions 23 and 24, near to Kelvedon and affecting both lanes.

“The road was closed overnight while a repair was carried out with the road reopened to traffic this morning.”

National Highways say the concrete “expanded” due to the extreme hit on Monday and Tuesday, cracking where it joins a piece of asphalt.

Gazette:

The spokesman added: "This is an older concrete section of the A12 which is due to be replaced as part of £400 million investment over the next three years to replace concrete roads and upgrade them to the higher standards we see across the majority of the strategic road network we operate.

“We manage approximately 4,300 miles of roads across England and have responded to a very small number of heat-related incidents on the network.

"While we continue to have these extremely high temperatures we have increased our monitoring of these particular roads.”