SOME time on Wednesday morning, a neighbour of one of the volunteer drivers of Swindon’s gritting wagons-cum-snowploughs turned up on his doorstep.

The man demanded of the driver’s wife why he wasn’t out gritting.

What the charming inquirer didn’t know was that the object of his ire – who would prefer not to be named in this story – was flat out in his bed upstairs, having just spent 13 hours covering hundreds of miles in one of Swindon’s nine gritting lorries.

Welcome to the somewhat thankless world of those who battle the worst the climate has to offer in order to make sure we all get to work, to medical appointments and to the various ports of call we take for granted.

Even the casual observer could easily have guessed that Tuesday night’s snowstorm was one of the worst of the winter, as one of the vehicles had to be fitted with a snowplough blade.

The volunteers wondered when they would see something as bad again.

In the event, they had to wait less than 24 hours, because Wednesday night saw not one but all nine of the lorries converted to snowplough mode.

I was invited to ride shotgun with veteran driver Mick Liddiard shortly after Wednesday evening’s near blizzard began at about 11pm.

The married father-of-three is a highways supervisor by day, having joined the council as an apprentice stonemason 38 years ago.

So what prompts a 58-year-old senior manager to go out gritting and ploughing?

It can’t be money because although the volunteers are not unpaid they aren’t paid a king’s ransom either.

Mick said: “It’s just something I enjoy, and that I’ve been doing for 30 years. It’s good to feel you’re making a difference and helping the community.”

Mick began the Wednesday evening shift by driving one of the ‘A’ list gritting routes.

These are the most important roads and take priority. Slightly less important routes – the ‘B’ list – are tackled afterwards.

Our semi-rural journey took us through Chiseldon, Bishopstone and Wroughton, among other communities. Within an hour of the snow beginning to fall, these usually familiar landscapes were transformed. Driving into the onslaught was at times like driving into a badly tuned TV set.

Radio communication from other drivers was full of updates – an ambulance stuck in Drove Road, an accident at the top of Kings Hill.

At 12.50am, the announcement came that all drivers should return to their base on the Cheney Manor Industrial Estate – the snow was so heavy that further gritting was pointless unless ploughing was done first.

Back at base, operations manager Richard Hedges had broken out copies of the seven designated ploughing routes, each containing a stripped down ‘doomsday’ list of only the most vital roads.

He told me that the last time all seven had been used at once was 10 or 15 years ago.

Riding in the passenger seat behind a snowplough at night is a bit like standing at the prow of a ship in choppy waters. Or at least it is when you’re the first vehicle through and the virgin snow is white. Slush is a far less aesthetically pleasing proposition.

I bailed out at 5am when we returned to the depot for more grit.

Mick and his colleagues had another two or three hours still to work.

MICK Liddiard has seen plenty of changes during his long stint as a volunteer gritter and snowplough driver. Computer technology now covers just about every aspect of the gritting process, with spread rates altered and monitored at the touch of a button.

Mick said: “That’s been the biggest change, and things are much better now. “Everything used to be done completely by hand.”

One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the peculiar behaviour of certain other road users when gritters are about.

Within minutes of setting out on Wednesday, we were cut up by a van, and we passed numerous car drivers who were attempting to climb steep, snow-covered gradients by flooring the accelerator and keeping the pedal to the metal, even though this achieved nothing other than spinning the drive wheels and slewing the cars all over the road.

The highlight – apart from a doe trotting at the side of Brimble Hill – came on a vital rural road at about 3am in the middle of our ploughing run.

That was when an apparently impatient car driver slithered past and through our plume of slush at a suicidal 40mph.

Mick merely chuckled. He said: “We see all kinds of things out here.

“Sometimes they just dawdle along in front of us. I know they might not be able to get out of our way immediately, but now and again would be nice. “But they’re the first to complain about roads not being gritted enough.”