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The middle of the road was full of pack ice and snow.
It was a very precarious journey and I was not an happy bunny sat in the front pedestrian seat. The CD and radio is not working due to taking the battery out to start some machinery on the smallholding and needs recoding some time. So we couldn't listen to local news bulletins or Classic hits my favourite radio station here in Ireland. We had to conversate now and again and I looked at the internet when I had a phone signal. I even cracked a few jokes which someone said :
"They were good the first thousand times!"
They had obviously not gritted the back roads and it was good to get back to the main roads where the grit salt had been spread. The road was very high and meandering. Perhaps it was far too risky to drive a salt Gritter on such a road?
Do you have rural roads that don't get salt spread on them? Or perhaps it's too dangerous to grit them?
Thanks for your comments on my last music post. I get hundreds of views when I post them. It's K next. I wonder who that will be? Another clue: Dorothy lived in that county? Her dog was the name of a Californian Heavy Rock band: Toto.
Gritter lorry drivers get to work very carefully!
ReplyDeleteMany years ago, when we were first married that's how my late husband earned a bit of extra overtime money in the winter. They used to go out gritting after their usual days work, or go into work very early. Things are all different now.
Over here there are different levels for which roads are gritted and all the tiny back roads never get done.
I could tell you lots more - but it would be very boring!
Mmm... no idea. Will it be Kool and the Gang? K.C. and the Sunshine Band? The KInks? I can't think of any others. By the way, even though we live almost two miles from Sheffield city centre our north-facing suburban road never gets gritted and can be treacherous after snow or a hard frost.
ReplyDeleteNot boring at all Sue. I think county councils everywhere are cutting back. If someone slipped on my path they could sue me but I couldn't sue the county council if we had an accident because they hadn't gritted the road. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteNot Karnataka either YP who I saw in Kent last August. We don't evenhave a few salt barrels or bags dropped at our cross so we can spread salt around our boreens. I dread to think how dangerous it must be for motorists travelling in Winter along rural roads that were made for horses and carts and don't even have cats eye in the middle of the road.
ReplyDeleteWe have a few salt bins on some of the street corners around here. One of the perks of being retired is not having to go out and drive on the dodgy icy roads if we don't have to!
ReplyDeleteLucky you to have salt bins JayCee. Our nearest bottle bank is at least 5 miles away. A lot of rural dwellers have to commute from West Cork to Cork and Killarney... We don't have street lights or pavements or public transport like you on the IOM. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHave you asked you Parish Council, or equivalent, for a grit/salt bin?
DeleteThere is a bit of a hill on a corner in my village that could do with a bin. It was reported to the PC who is going to request a bin from the County Highways - will be interesting to see if anything happens
We don't have a parish council Traveller. The roads speeds are 80Km per hour and I can't even walk along them safely any more. County councils seem to be a law unto themselves. We don't have public transport, water, mains sewers or street lights and pavements. Yet people in villages and towns get all of the above yet we pay the same property tax.
DeleteDave we saw something on TV the other night about 'leveling up' - money supposedly available to rural communities to bring their infrastructure into the current century. While I can't argue with that, I do wonder if making it easier for towns-folk to live in rural areas means an influx of people who couldn't OTHERWISE cope there, and whether the communities will be less cohesive as a result.
DeleteIt would be good to see levelling up in the countryside Tigger. Most town folk wouldn't be able to afford to live in the countryside and their aren't that many jobs in rural areas these days.
DeleteOnly A and B roads are gritted here. No other roads are touched.
ReplyDeleteThanks Rachel. We get always get annoyed with the weather
ReplyDeleteMost all of our roads are backroads. Almost all of them are traveled by school buses. Grit truck drivers here are warned of the weather before it even hits, and they call in drivers ahead of the storm. There are always the surprises, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteProbably five years ago, my friend's husband (a grit truck driver) had a day off work. Whatever appointment he and his wife had was canceled due to the weather. Danny is a worker, so he decided to just go into work because the weather was ominous. Within site of the station, he was hit by a truck coming the other way. The drivers lost control on the curve and hit him head on. All three passengers in the other truck were badly injured. One of them lost his foot. Danny was hospitalized for months with a couple dozen broken bones. His head broke the window glass. It was awful. It took weeks before we were even sure tha the would live.
I always look at the weather forecast before we set off Debby. That's awful what happened to Danny and his work colleagues. Thanks for sharing it with us.
DeleteWe don't get snow here so there's no need for salting any roads. We do very occasionally get icy patches and there are warnings to drive slow and take care.
ReplyDeleteThanks for telling us about how you cope with ice in Australia River.
DeleteI live in a very remote area almost at the end of a dead end lane. There is a grit box on the hill just up from our house. We grit the road ourselves if it needs it. The Parish Council fills up the box from time to time.
ReplyDeleteThe best think for winter conditions are winter tyres. When we lived in Canada, once the temperatures dropped, we’d swap over to winter tires, as did almost everyone else. Makes a huge difference - wider tread and a different compound.
Winter tyres would be a good idea Traveller along with reduced speeds. Irish weather can be four seasons in a hour.
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