Do you remember the good old days before the wind farm?
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COLUMN: Postie Notes by Mark Gilbert
Road related stories are prevalent in my Postie Notes, simply because I travel 90 miles a day.
Pete and I always critique each other’s columns when they appear in “The Raggie” and when I told him that this was also roads related, we laughed when we agreed that the readers would probably say, “bloody whining posties, always moaning about roads”!
I had to take my truck to Inverness for some warranty work on the Thursday of Christmas week and as I went past the Creag Riabhach Wind Farm, just above the Crask, there was a piece on the radio about Terry Hall of the Specials, who had passed away the week before – I’ll come back to this.
What has become “normal” on the road from the wind farm to Lairg, either early in the morning, or late afternoon, is the amount of traffic – usually going in the opposite direction, with one man in each vehicle and none of them observing any courtesies of single-track roads. So, it becomes a fraught few miles, especially in the dark and rain, when three of them have “ganged up” to force you to reverse downhill to a passing place.
Previously, on the trip down, I used to count the vehicles I saw between Skerray and Bonar Bridge – 55 miles – and I would sometimes get up to a heady 15 vehicles. Now I don’t bother.
So, just as I had passed the entrance to the wind farm, the Specials “Ghost Town” was played and I sniggered to myself (yes, I know) when I started singing “Do you remember the good old days before the wind farm?” On my return journey, I encountered ONE car.
Not many folk have an understanding of the Highway Code relating to single-track roads, so here it is. Please note the uphill words, as this is the most abused!
Going west up Apigill, it’s amazing how many berks coming downhill ‘don’t see’ a car coming uphill with its lights on, when you can see most of the hill all the way up and down.
The Highway Code, Section 133: Single-track roads. These roads are only wide enough for one vehicle. They have special passing places. If you see a vehicle coming towards you, or the driver behind wants to overtake, pull into a passing place on your left, or wait opposite a passing place on your right. Give way to vehicles coming uphill whenever you can. If necessary, reverse until you reach a passing place to let the other vehicle pass.
In a gesture that helped get mail to my addresses in the 27-mile corridor from Kinbrace to the Bettyhill end of Strathnaver, which I hadn’t been able to negotiate for five days in the run up to Christmas, the gamekeepers from Syre Estate offered to drive me to Kinbrace in one of their 4x4 trucks to retrieve the mail and get it back to my postie van, parked at the bottom of Dalvina Brae.
Even after five days, the road was only just passable, but there were no passing places, because the plough had cleared the snow from the road and blocked them.
The deer had retaken their road and we encountered hundreds of them, which was very exciting, but slowed us down even further, because they just ran in front of us, going the same direction.
My customers were very grateful to get their parcels and mail, and thanks – and a happy soon to be “retirement” – to the head gamekeeper, after 30 years as part of this close community.
Mark Gilbert works as a postman in Bettyhill.
