Culvert Survey & A Big Hill!

A beautiful day today. Weather wise that is. Glorious sunshine and a trip to Liskard. Drove the Merc Sprinter and went in to my first Traffic Management absolutely fine. Carried the tractor (very heavy and it took 2 of us) in to the culvert and surveyed 130m of lined pipe. Job done. What I forgot to mention was to get to the the culvert we had to drop down a very steep, very muddy slope, about 100m. Getting down was easy just using the brakes. Coming back up was another matter!

Tried to take a run-up at the hill to start with. Got a quarter way up and started sliding back. eventually decide to come back down and wait for a tow. Something we had been told could happen. The guys came down in their land-rover and we hooked up and they started our trip upwards. Time after time, the engine would cut-out or the wheels would spin too much. In the end we actually started pulling the land rover back down with us. At this stage I managed to slip the one side in to a ditch. Missed the fence so drove back OK. Or so I thought!

One of the guys in the land-rover shouted you have a puncture, so we got out and listened to the sound of hissing. So a puncture isn't a great thing to have but with 3 grown men in the van it should be sortable. We first checked we had a spare. Yes! However, it is underneath the van so I had to reverse back and hang the back end out over a mud cliff. Very precarious. It was at this stage we discovered we had a jack but no wheel brace. To get the spare wheel out we needed a wheel brace. At this stage there were some suitable words being spoken about the situation. Our only route was to ask the other company if they had one. Nope!! Good reply.

I then managed to get a lift in to Liskard looking for Halfords. There's no Halfords. There's no shop that sells such a thing as spanners. However, there was an ATS so after a quick chat and a bit of charm I managed to borrow a brace. After a quick drive back, got the spare wheel out and the flat type off. Spare straight on and set to go again. This time we used a lorry winch to get us up the hill. Worked a treat. Should of used this the first time around rather than a tiny land-rover. Unbelievable.

After a quick trip into Liskard to drop off the brace, oh and get some air in our tyre we finally drove back to Taunton. Thank you Liskard ATS for a wonderful service. I think you saved us being stuck in a culvert for an eternity.

Well if all days are like this, it will certainly be an interesting job!!!