A small number of roads in the Forest are designated as Single-Track Roads with Passing Places. In order for these roads to function effectively, you need to know that the passing places are long enough for three cars (or one car with a caravan).
The passing places are typically on alternate sides of the road. When you reach a passing place, you should check the road in front and see if there are on coming cars. If there are then you should wait for those cars to pass before you can move on.
Further problems occur when someone fails to stop at the passing place. The only solution was for me to reverse to the previous passing space. Luckily, at that stage, there was no one behind me and so it was possible, if time consuming.
Thank goodness there were a few people on the road that day who understood how to behave on a single-track road and waited for the oncoming traffic to arrive. By this stage, we had become a group of three, so I had to move as far forward as I could to allow the oncoming traffic to pass us using the passing place.
As you can see, this single-track road was very busy on this day, probably due to Sat Navs diverting traffic away from the A31, without realising how narrow this road is.
There always has to be one though. He must have been able to see us when he passed the passing place, but still decided it was his right of way. I encouraged him to back to the passing place to allow our group of three cars to progress. He managed to back a few feet and then obviously decided that backing that far was beyond his driving abilities, so the only way to progress was to push past us. Luckily, he was a small car and so managed to pass without damaging vehicles.
After that, the leapfrogging worked pretty well and the journey was accomplished without further incident. However, it did take 16 minutes to travel two miles. So, if you are travelling on a single-track road, remember the Three Car Rule.
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