8 January, 2010 
The overnight temperature dropped to -13.2 C.
The council have not ploughed our access road since the last snowfall. They haven’t gritted it for days.
The road between our croft and the village has been ploughed, but is covered in compacted snow and ice.
The roads are much more slippery today than they have been throughout the heavy snow falls because they’re covered in compacted ice, often with a thin coat of loose snow on top.
Aberdeenshire Council is prioritising major routes only to stretch its gritting resources.
Our local primary school is closed to both transport pupils, such as our boys, and to village pupils as it’s considered too dangerous for school buses to run or for children to walk along the icy footpaths.
The Other Half is a teacher, and her secondary school 20 miles away is closed to transport pupils as it’s too dangerous for school buses to operate.
So what do the school managers expect?
They expect their staff to show up for work, even if they live outside walking distance of their schools and even if they live well away from their school.
As a result, I was outside at 6.30am, working in temperatures of -10.7C to get the OH on her way to work.
First, I had to slip and slide my way to the feed store to get the salt so I could make a safe path to the car.
The Land Rover’s locks had to be thawed, then the hinges. The air intakes were blocked with ice so they had to be cleared.
Two feet of snow had to come off the bonnet and roof, but the ground was too slippery so more salt went down.
With the car finally open and the engine started—yes, I always make sure we have a good strong battery at the start of winter and change to winter grade oil—it was time to start on the road.
I shovelled a clear path down to the junction, then dug through the drifts thrown up by the plough.
With one wheel track cleared, I dug a second path back to our entrance.
I spread almost 10kg of salt down both wheel paths and switched the car off, before going back inside to thaw my feet.
A mere two hours had passed.
I put my boots on a radiator, had some breakfast and went back out.
By now, it was 9am and time for the OH to be at work.
I had to thaw the Land Rover’s tailgate fasteners with a blowtorch so I could open the pickup bed to load an extra snow shovel, hessian sacks and a few other things in addition to our normal recovery gear.
I put more salt down as the cleared and salted tracks to the “main” road had frozen again.
The OH was loaded into the car, along with food, a thermos of hot water and tea bags, waterproof overtrousers, spare socks, spare shoes, fully charged mobile phone and more. (We already have drinking water, blankets, gritting salt and the like in the truck.)
The last I saw of her she was rounding a bend at about 10mph, with the back end of the truck gently but controllably going sideways.
She was already 38 minutes later for work.
I emailed our two local councillors, saying in part:
“If the council is neither ploughing nor gritting minor routes, and accepts that it is unsafe for children to get to school, why do its education managers think it acceptable to put pressure on their staff to attend?
“I’ve had no problems with the amount of ploughing and gritting done on our rural roads. in fact, the work that has been done has exceeded my expectations.
“But there are obviously limits to what can be done and education managers should bear this in mind when expecting their staff to appear at work.
“I know they will come up with “escape” clauses such as “attend only if its safe”, but as my wife and I are well aware that’s a figleaf intended to show they are displaying a duty of care towards their employees. In reality, teachers and other employees who do not go in will have a black mark put against them.”
I went on to say:
“Education managers should give up their macho attitudes and use the brains they supposedly have.
“If the roads are too unsafe for buses to collect children and take them to school, then it can hardly be safe for teachers and other staff to drive in.
“It should be simple enough to pick up a phone and check with schools closest to where any given teacher lives and see if their school transport is able to run. If it isn’t, then it is unfair and unsafe to put pressure on staff to drive from that area to their school.”
Just as I finished inserting that paragraph, a neighbour phoned.
She also works in a school and was asking how we’d found the roads.
Our neighbour had already phoned her school and asked what the head teacher wanted her to do given our local conditions.
The head said it wasn’t her job to make a decision. It was her job to record who had and who had not turned up at school.
As our neighbour said, “In other words, the assumption will be that if you don’t turn up and other people do, then you are skiving.”
Never mind that the roads are worse now than when they were under inches of snow. Never mind that it’s too dangerous for children to go to school.
Never mind that little meaningful work would be done in the absence of most students and many staff.
No, while managers will publicly pretend it’s okay for staff to stay home if the roads are unsafe, in reality staff are expected to be at work and to be there on time.
Talk about stupid macho posturing.
The OH just phoned. She picked up a colleague 1.5 miles down the road, then made it another half mile into the village. The road is slippery and there are drifts blowing across it. She phoned a depute head, asking if they really expected staff to be in. He would only say, “Come in if you feel it’s safe”, but with the unsaid expectation that it probably was safe and they really should be at work.
The OH decided it was ridiculous to meet that expectation and will be returning home.
Hello Stonehead,
Tis unfortunately a malady of our times where the people ‘in charge’ would rather leave the decision (and guilt) on the shoulders of the people that they are supposed to be managing, covering themselves with statements such as ‘if you feel that it’s safe’ and then giving them the black spot when there’s a no show thus allowing folk to put themselves in danger at ‘there own decision (think this makes sense?). I hope that your OH arrives home safely, make sure that there’s a warming drink for her.
Regards,
John
Just “nipped” into the village myself. Had to meet a courier who couldn’t get any further out in his Transit. The road is horrendous—much worse than the section I cleared by hand. It’s very slippery, with serious drifts on top of ice at some of the worst bends and particularly at Dunnydeer. I did some nice, semi-controlled slides as even 5-10mph was almost too fast on some spots. I was very impressed that the OH not only made it into the village earlier but got home again.
Hi Stonehead,
I read with interest the reactions in the uk to the weather crisis. Living in Nova scotia Canada the routine you describe above to get your wife to work sounds similar to mine. Country differences aside it just shows how prepared for all eventualities you have to be too live in a rural area. We live 30 miles from the nearest town, my wife lives 40 miles from work and without a 4×4 vehicle and tractor with snow blower we could not live here. Often we will get 12-18 inches snow overnight which means i have to get up at 5am to clear the drive (500m long) so my wife can make it to work on time. Staying at home is not an option, if she doesnt get to work patients are not treated (nurse).I recall a previous post of yours where you were lambasted for driving a 4×4 sometimes they are just essential.
One major difference in our routines is that my animals, (cows/pigs/sheep/chickens) are all tucked up in a barn at this time of year so makes looking after the animals a bit easier.
Good luck with the grind i hear ya.
Cheers
Mark
The OH probably could have made it, but the journey would have been very slow and hazardous without snowchains or studs if the roads further on had been like ours. The tyres on our Defender can take studs but I’ve never seen them for sale in the UK.
It’s arguable there’s too much reliance on councils using gritters to keep the roads open instead of expecting drivers to have the most appropriate tyres and, if necessary, traction aids on their vehicles. We have a serious edge in snow thanks to being among the few people who have winter or snow tyres on their vehicles, but even they have their limits—especially on compacted snow and ice.
My main worry, though, is not this winter but the next one. The BF Goodrich Trac Edge tyres on our Land Rover haven’t been manufactured for some years now and ours will need to be replaced this year. There are plenty of all-terrain and mud tyres about, but I haven’t yet found a genuine replacement for a snow and mud tyre like the Trac Edge.
The replacement for the Trac Edge is the Commercial T/A, also moulded for studs and carrying a severe snow rating, but for some reason they’re very hard to find in Europe.
Other manufacturers don’t have much or anything either.
As my dad used to say, “If brains were dynamite, some people wouldn’t have enough to blow their hats off!” And it look like your local education managers fall effortlessly into that category. Just so they know the lengths to which you and OH have gone to get her on the road this morning, why not email them with a transcript of today’s blog posting? You could also send them the blog address so that they could see the photographic evidence. It might lead to more sensible ‘management expectations’ in future…?
No, I don’t think so either!
Snowplough has just been through at 4pm. Did the “main” road and a small section of the junction.
Oh, and I was just having a quick look at Inspector Gadget’s blog. His latest post is interesting reading, but I was particularly interested in this comment from Howard. Yes, the police have managers snapped from the same mould as the education service. The one with the label that reads “plonkers”.
“Plonkers”? Too kind. I don’t think that’s what Howard called them!
The school board here has a similar stance. I think that money is so tight that they feel that it’ll help balance unexpected expenses. The plan for next year is to charge a yearly fee of $200 for each school-bus-rider. It feels like we’re under attack, sometimes.
Our circumstances are very similar to yours, further from school with an elevation change of 1250′. We expect the conditions you’re describing every couple of years, not quite yearly. The right tires help, but I’m always ready to chain up with cam-lock chains when common sense dictates their use.
Last year we had a few weeks of – 17C. The colder weather helps it be less slippery.
It sounds like you’re coping well, and it sounds like the Other Half made the right decision regarding school.
Betcha’ your house is cold, though ! And I’ve got to admit that it’s way more fun to read about it than experience it ! Nice post.
cheers
We’re comfortable, but some would say the house is cold. We run the heating for a couple of hours first thing in the morning and another couple in the evening. On cold days, when it’s down past -5C outside, we’ll light the open fire of an evening.
At the moment it’s 11.8C in the kitchen and 14C in the living room. The kitchen feels cool, the living room is comfortable. But then we do wear thermal underwear and sweaters inside, and have blankets over our knees if needed (not tonight).
We know it’s cold when we go to use the toilet first thing in the morning and find the cistern has frozen!
The OH visited a work colleague recently who was wandering around her house in jeans and T-shirt. Her house was heated well into the high 20s. The OH found it unbearable.
As for snow chains, they’re on the wish list but we have far too many “priority” items competing for our limited budget.
Would it be possible for the teachers and staff to call round and collectively decide that the weather’s too bad to come in? Then nobody would look like they were skiving off in comparison to anybody else. Would they still get a black mark?
BTW, that sounds like an absolutely unreal amount of work for a private citizen (or her husband) to have to go to in order to get to a job that’s effectively been canceled for the day. “Plonkers” is right.
I don’t mind putting in the work. Just as I don’t mind the weather. I always defrost the car, give it a safety check, check the fluids, and have it ready for the OH before she leaves for work. Some days it just takes a little longer.
But I don’t appreciate having her best efforts and mine being ignored by brainless prats because they judge others by what they’d be doing in similar circumstances.
Anyway, both Cllr Al-Kowarri and Cllr Grant have responded to my emails to them. Cllr Al-Kowarri said conditions in Kemnay, where she lives, were the worst she’s seen them and was surprised the school was open. Both councillors have offered to take the matter up with the Director of Education.
Due credit and thanks to both of them.
I hear you, loud and clear. It is sheer idiocy!
We lived up north in British Columbia in the 80s where severe winter conditions were the norm. We also lived 30 miles from the city where I taught high school, while my husband practiced law. Our son was a rural bus student, and many days his school bus was not able to do the required pickup of students. However, i was expected to show up at my school for work. The description you gave is eeriely similar to the machinations we had to get up to in the early morning big snow and freeze days. We drove a Toyota Landcruiser with chains in order for my husband and me to get into work. On days when bus service for kids was cancelled we often had our arrival back at home delayed until 8pm, because we had to abandon the 4wheel drive a mile from home and slog it on foot the rest of the way. That was after a day of make-work in an empty school and anxiety about what conditions would be like on the return trip home. The powers that be must have come to the srange conclusion that if in possession of a 4wheel drive vehicle, teachers could be expected to be in attendance – of an empty school. Sheer crazyness.
it seems you got some intelligent support from two of your councillors. Keep the pressure on, and continue to seek support from others in your community to force the school district to make sensible policies for teacher attendance on impossible weather days. G
It’s interesting the different policies used in other parts of the world; here, if the buses don’t run then school is cancelled for everyone.
Of course, bosses aren’t always so sensible; although the wind chill was -41 this morning and all the schools closed, my boss wanted me to make the 50 mile commute so my meetings wouldn’t have to be rescheduled.
The lane past our ffarm has neither been cleared of snow nor gritted, at all, this winter; we are simply not a priority. Other local dairy farmers whose milk is collected by tanker have suffered similarly & have been forced to discard their milk as even the most Herculean efforts of the drivers have been thwarted; so already-impoverished farmers are now not only seeing what little profit they might eke out literally going down the drain, money haemmorhages further as of course the animals still need to be fed & watered.
Whilst for me it is academic to an extent (‘scuse the pun) as my half-mile-long driveway is completely impassable owing to drifting snow & ice (& we currently have neither tractor nor Bobcat to clear it), I do feel for many of our other rural residents (many of whom are elderly) who live closer to said lane.
It infuriates me because we pay our taxes just the same as the urban dwellers; yet we do not get a fraction of the benefits that they enjoy for our hard-earned money. Why it is considered perfectly acceptable to leave us ‘at risk’ – especially in outlying areas – I just cannot fathom when at challenging times such as these, arguably our need for safe & clear roads is the greater.
And then you get the Emergency Services stretched to the limit & having to work all hours. Why? Because mindless bureaucrats put pressure on their staff, forcing them to take unreasonable risks to attempt to get into work rather than taking a healthy dose of realism & accepting that it’s far better to allow people to stay safe; then make it in & make it up another day; than perhaps to lose them for longer owing to an accident or worse still, permanently, as the result of a tragic accident – which could so easily have been avoided.
After all when the Emergency Services state “do NOT travel unless you literally have a life-or-death reason to do so” – they really mean it.
What truly annoyed a lot of people round here last week, though: the road through to one of the outlying villages was carefully ploughed & gritted….right the way up to the local councillor’s doorstep. Tax payers’ “level playing field”? Erm, excuse me…??!!
You are definitely getting fed up, then?
You want to be careful, people will start thinking there are two grumpy old sods out there.
Make it three!
Our lane has not been gritted and has only been ploughed because a local farmer has done so.
The main roads have clear tyre tracks but any side road is lethal, glazed slick ice.
I have to make a decision if I should drive somewhere on Monday, so tried things out today. ( car loaded with shovel, cat litter, hessian sacks, spare clothes, wellies etc, all of which live in car at first sign of bad weather)
I am a good, bad weather driver and had no problems to speak of, a bit of controlled drift etc…but I nearly got taken out by someone driving at stupidly high speeds while using a mobile……..!
I pay a huge amount of Cuuncil tax and all I get is a refuse and a recycling collection ( oh no, wait, I didn’t even get that this week!) and CG’s school has now been shut for 3 1/2 days and IF it re opens on monday there will be no bus transport and no hot meals available…..
ANd yes, I, too, am having some difficulty getting across how difficult it is here to some of the people who have booked me to work next week…..
OH did the right thing Stoney, and your emails were spot on!
We did a supply run to Huntly and back today. The hill road has been ploughed fairly frequently and occasionally gritted, but it was still a challenging drive that was approaching the Defender’s tyre limits. The main problem was long stretches of smooth sheet ice—usually with a steep drop to one side of the road!
At no point did I think I’d lose control, but we were swinging, sliding and slithering a lot. On the worst downhill stretch, I had the difflock on and low-range selected so I could let the truck growl, snort and shudder its way down. It never ran away or totally lost traction, but it was close.
I’d prefer to have had snow chains on or studded tyres, and that’s a first for me on that section of road.
Given that experience and the pressure on the OH to be at work, I’ve reluctantly decided to use the credit card to buy a set of snow chains. We can’t really afford them as we’re already down to the bone but I’d prefer to have a higher margin of safety.
Actually, it’s telling that we’re often told by people with rather more money than us that they “shouldn’t have to fit winter tyres” as it’s the council’s job to keep the roads clear in all weather. They don’t feel they have any responsibility to ensuring their car is safe to drive in the conditions and don’t want to prioritise responsible driving over iPhones, PS3s, plasma TVs, Blackberries, nights out etc.
We’re strapped for cash, but we’ll still find the money to put appropriate tyres on our truck and to get further traction aids when they prove necessary.
But then we prefer self-reliance to self-indulgence.
Well done!
I must add to my previous comment, I didn’t JUST go out to try my driving…I actually needed supplies which couldn’t wait and more petrol and some medication which I wasn’t able to get earlier in the week….
Still not sure if I am going to risk it on Monday, I saw too many nutters today…..
We get much of the same here. (North Carolina) The local police might be telling people to stay home and off the roads but we are expected to turn up to keep the city library open.
Once we manage the roads to actually get there if we risk it, no effort to clear paths for staff around our workplace gets made. So off to slip and slide across the sidewalks and adjoining building’s parking lot we go.
If you don’t come in you’re charged for leave time. If you do come in it’s at your own risk. One colleague has already slipped on ungritted ice in our parking deck this last snowfall and broken his wrist. Surgery and two casts later and he’s not yet back at work.
Do the managers show up for work? Hah.
My pension is a ‘day short’ because of a missed day due to heavy snow, some 42 years ago! Having set out an hour earlier than usual, three of us teachers suffered a written off car and plenty of bruises and a 4 hour trudge on foot, before we phoned the school from a red phone box to say we were on the way…only to be told not to bother as the school was empty and about to close.
However, despite these heroic efforts, we each lost a days pay… and therefore a day of service and therefore receive a slightly reduced pension forever!
They later changed the rule and said every teacher should report to the nearest school