PLOUGHING FOR YORKSHIRE
WHEN GENIAL Yorkshire Dales farmer Rodney Beresford talks about his other job manning the area’s snowplough and ensuring that even in the deepest snow the remotest villages remain accessible, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s famous advert springs to mind.
“Men wanted for hazardous journey to the South Pole,” it began and continued in much the same vein. “Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful . . .”
Last week saw Yorkshire get its first proper taste of snow this winter and while the region escaped the worst of the heavy snowfalls that hit Wales and swathes of the Midlands at the weekend, Rodney was still on call. With a few years’ experience under his belt he now knows where the worst spots tend to be.
One is close to the White Scar Caves where the road from Ingleton Quarry joins the main road, then there is the hill just a little further along from which the Old Hill Inn gets it name and which can often prove treacherous for drivers.
The truth is in this part of the Dales most of the roads, which are some of the highest in Yorkshire, are turned into veritable Baby Matterhorns following a dumping of snow and Rodney admits that sometimes working the plough is a pretty thankless task.
“Too true,” he says, explaining that when the blizzards are at their worst, an area once cleared can be quickly blanketed again. Plumes of blizzarding snow billowing down from Ingleborough, Whernside and Penyghent are the culprits and it means the snow ploughing has to be repeated all over again.
“The same goes where lethal black ice smears the Tarmac,” says Rodney, whose son Thomas also helps out. “The salt we deposit from the hoppers melts it like magic, but thanks to the windchill factor the wet asphalt can refreeze fast.”
Rodney also clears snow on Wharfedale’s infamous Fleet Moss Tour de Yorkshire hill climb, which reaches 2,000ft altitude and overlooks Hawes, and on a typical winter’s morning he might come across half a dozen lorries stuck in the drifts.
“Fleet Moss is probably the very worst place to clear,” he says. “Thomas even rescued a council gritting wagon here. Honestly, it’s diabolical.” All of which makes you wonder how the father-and-son team got landed with the job of working the snow ploughs in the first place.
With mug of Yorkshire Tea in hand and sitting near the Raeburn in which he and wife, Eileen, keep orphan lambs warm in spring, home for Rodney is the cosy Newby Head Farm.
Perched at an altitude of 1,400ft – as high as New York’s Empire State Building – it is one of those rare farms that is unable to diversify and earn extra income by opening up land for a caravan site.
“Too windy up here for caravans,” laughs Rodney. “They blow over.”
They are used to coping with extreme elements in this part of the Dales and the Beresfords couldn’t understand why when it snowed none of the ploughs ever made it as far as the roads around Ingleton.
“How we began snow ploughing six or seven years ago was through frustration,” says Rodney, who when out on the plough exists on a diet of fresh air and lemonade. “We got so fed up with the road from Ingleton to Hawes getting blocked up and the council leaving us abandoned, I asked them why?
“Turns out down at Skipton they didn’t know it was snowing up here. We were effectively left to our own devices. Though these days satellite weather maps give them a clue I asked them if we could do this area.
“They took my hand off. Now we work for ‘North Yorkshire County Council, Skipton area’ – snow ploughing and gritting right on the county council’s extremity.”
Situated on a panhandle within snow-ploughing range of Ribblehead, Horton-in-Ribblesdale, Settle, Bentham, Ingleton and Chapel-leDale, the Beresfords clear stretches of roads and isolated farm tracks with painstaking care.
Both Rodney and son keep their big tractors and various snow plough blades and snow-blowers at the lofty farm. Rodney helps clear the way on the icy roads of the Three Peaks country with his monster Deutz 150hp tractor. Plus a snow plough, a hopper loaded with salt the colour of smoked salmon and a snow blower.
It’s 11 miles to Ingleton, by which time he can polish off a full hopper containing one and a half tonnes of salt. He fills up again at the local council yard.
Standing 6ft 5ins tall in his work togs of balaclava, heavy-duty wellies, padded snow suit and fluorescent coat, he is still dwarfed by his tractor’s big wheels as he clambers up the steps to the cab with its heated windows.
Thomas, by way of comparison, is a bus driver and mechanic whose firm kindly allows him time off for clearing the local roads, a move which is not entirely altruistic.
“Bibby’s Coaches of Ingleton need to ensure their buses and passengers don’t get stranded,” says Rodney.
Thomas is also a photographer who carries his camera while snowploughing and has set up his own dedicated Facebook page. Just flicking through his images of stranded cars in snowdrifts can induce a shiver. Jack-knifed wagons which Thomas has also rescued are all here. No wonder he has, at the time of writing, an impressive 49,627 Facebook followers.
Both tractors are more manoeuvrable on narrow and twisting moorland roads than the wagons used for snow ploughing. Yet they have the necessary horse-power when needed.
They can rescue jack-knifed lorries and up-ended cars that have gone off the road, taking the strain like tug boats with chains that drag crashed vehicles back from the wet cement-like snow on to the Tarmac.
So after the recent cold snap, what can the pair expect from the rest of the winter? While the Met Office reports suggest it will be a wet winter ahead, following similar soggy debacles in recent years where floods rather than frosts have caused havoc, long-term forecasts are never wholly reliable.
“One of the worst winters up here was 1947,” says, Rodney, “Old-timers remember it was a bad summer before that notoriously bad winter. The Army had to use flame-throwers in an attempt to blast through drifts on the Settle-Carlisle railway, not far from the famous Ribblelehead Viaduct. The result? The intense heat buckled the rails.”
Whatever this year’s winter brings, it is unlikely to rival those Arctic conditions. “Oh, I’ve just thought,” says Rodney, ruffling his thatch of silver hair. “You know I said I drank lemonade at work? Well, I might have a plate of Spam sarnies when I get back.”