Farming Community

Monday 1st August 2022

The funeral of our farmer was due to take place at 12.30pm. This morning the Police cordon from yesterday's incident still surrounded the pub and blocked off access to our second car park. We were anticipating the funeral to be a large one, drawing from the farming community. We made the Police aware of the potential difficulty in parking and they said they would do all they could to get the access open in time. They managed to get it open by 11.30am for us.. 

Then a new problem arose. BT Openreach turned up and installed traffic lights on our stretch of the road and cones blocking off all the church side of the road! We made them aware of the funeral, the guys rang their boss and the answer came back that nothing could be done, the work must go ahead. It would have been nice if they had consulted with us beforehand. Thankfully the guys allowed us to move some of the cones so the cortege could arrive at the gate. The coffin arrived in style, surrounded by hay bales, on a trailer pulled by a tractor. There were approx 240 in church to pay their respects and all went well. RIP Jim. 

The lights caused a bit of difficulty for cars as they left our car park as they were entering a signal controlled lane without knowing which way the traffic was flowing. That didn't seem to be a problem on Openreach's risk assessment.