Rock Walk; Day 03

The man in the photo is at the top of a 200 foot high cliff and 30 feet up a tree trunk held on only by a couple of leather straps and some sharp things in his boots. The crane is lowering a big, heavy hook on the end of a long even heavier chain and it is swinging around the top of the tree trunk very near our hero's head. Our brave, very brave, tree man just reached out and grabbed the hook which he them used to attach to the top of the tree. Then he slid down 15 feet and used his chain saw, which you can see hanging below, to cut through the trunk. The crane then lowered the cut section of tree to the ground where it was fed into a large shredder. The man up the tree meanwhile had a bit of a rest until the hook returned. All in a day's work. Glad I'm a bus driver.

I have lots of photos of the action at Rock Walk and over the weekend I am going to start a new blog called Rock Walk, Torquay and will display many of them there.

Meanwhile out on the road, when I started at 12:44 I was called on the witness a drugs test. All employees of the company are subject to random drink and drugs tests as part of a continued drive to ensure the highest safety standards. Tests for two types of drugs were carried out and as you would expect the driver concerned tested negative for both types.

Then I took over a bus at 13:02 and the driver I relieved reported that there had been an RTC in New Road, Brixham. A car was on it's roof but the road was open on one side of the road while recovery of the vehicle was taking place. No one was reported hurt and delays were only slight. The car was still there when I got to Brixham and police were direction traffic past the scene of the incident.

A couple of hours later yet an other RTC was reported on the 111 route between Berry Pomeroy and Marldon. The road was closed for about two hours. I have no other details concerning the vehicles concerned nor if there were any casualties. They say things happen in threes.

The problem of running the diversion route on the 12/12A service remain but it is getting easier as we, the drivers and the passengers, are get used to it. We are still getting passengers on the wrong bus and they get a little confused when you tell them the bus isn't going where they expect it to be. Abbey Road, which was gridlocked on Monday is usually clear but now and then it clogs up for a few minutes. Cars are still managing to drive through Fleet Street and one confused driver did a 3 point turn on the Strand (which is a dual carriageway) and ended going the wrong way. Most of the vehicle down there are buses and no harm was done.