When I was going home on Tuesday night I was surprised to see that the road – though not the pavement – going down the hill was completely free of snow & ice. Then I heard something heavy coming slowly towards the valley bottom down the much longer & steeper hill on the other side. Must be the gritter, I thought, surprised - this road does not usually get priority for gritting, leading as it does to just a relatively few houses & farms
But no, it was the milk wagon. I have only been seeing this recently, always in the evening; when it gets up to the main road it crosses over & continues up the hill, obviously to one or more of the farms up there. It is silver coloured, without any markings that I can see (in the dark), certainly not those of one of the major dairy companies. I assume that it belongs to some newish small-scale local processing business
It pleased me to think that perhaps the council had upped the priority for the road so as not to damage this initiative
This morning the man from the county council was on the radio to explain that ‘contingencies’ may have to be put in place if the snow & ice continue
They normally keep 7k tonnes of grit in stock, with a supplier contracted to keep the piles topped up. The supplier has been unable to fulfil the contract in the current circs, so we are now down to 2k tonnes, enough for only 4 days of a full gritting programme. If the search for alternative supplies is unsuccessful, only the main roads will be guaranteed to be kept open
Despite the fact that traffic has been moving easily on most of the roads, we still have not had our fortnightly bin collection (non-recyclable rubbish) which was supposed to be on Tuesday. The bins sit forlornly at the edge of the lane, awaiting the bin mens convenience
