As you can see, it's very narrow. However, it's also very handy, as it connects the villages to the north of Colchester with the A12 to London and to west Colchester. If you don't use Argent's Lane, you have to wait at a level crossing (and you can wait a long time there — sometimes 5 or 6 trains go past before there's a long enough gap for people to get through).
Why would anyone use the level crossing? Ah, well as I mentioned, Argent's Lane is narrow. It is, in fact, single track. That means there isn't room enough for two vehicles to pass each other down it. One of them will have to pull over somewhere to let the other through, hopefully avoiding the ditches that run either side of the lane (which, by the way, is sunken — there's anything between 2 and 4 feet of earth to the side of you as you drive along it).
Here's a car using it, snapped by Google Earth. You can see I'm not kidding: this is one narrow road:
This made it all the more alarming when I drove along it this morning to go to Sainsbury's and found an ARTICULATED LORRY coming the other way. Well, it was trying to: there was a string of cars in front of me all trying to figure out how it was going to get past — once it had managed to get round the kink in the road in which its trailer had become lodged.
I did a 15-point turn so I was pointing the other direction (very splendidly, if I say so myself) and took my chances with the level crossing. I only had to wait for 2 trains, then I was through.
Ah, satnavs.