We're shattered say men who grit the roads while you sleep

Gordon, 34, from Chesham, is one of 50 men who, for the past five weeks, have been getting up well before the crack of dawn to grit the county's roads.
He and two colleagues agreed to talk to the Advertiser at the end of a long shift last week to give the public an insight into how tough the job is.
Gordon has worked at 21 hour shift 18 times since temperatures plummeted on the night of December 17, before the biggest snowfall for 30 years.
He arrives at the depot on London Road at 3.15am to load up his truck with rock salt, before heading out on his route through Amersham, Ley Hill and Chesham. He returns several times to pick up more grit (actually rock salt) finishing at 6am. He must then wash down his truck; rock salt is highly corrosive. There's time for a quick break before he starts his day job at 7.30am fixing potholes and doing other on-going repairs to the highway. At 4pm he goes home and if he's doing a 7pm round he'll have time for dinner and two hours sleep before he's back at work again.
Not only does he have to contend with freezing temperatures - it dropped to minus seven earlier this month - and steep hills, but he must negotiate his way around parked cars, and all this on snow that has not get been gritted.
He says: "The trucks weigh 20 tonnes, compared to a car which weighs half a tonne, and, there are times when your life flashes before your eyes. It's more fear of what you could hit than for yourself, when you're going down a road with parked cars on each side."
But what Gordon and his colleagues find so frustrating, is that the public often direct their anger at the national shortage of grit at them personally.
He says: "Nobody believes that we gritted on December 17 and 18 but we went out three times in 12 hours."
Vince Mayo, 43, from Chesham, grits in Little Chalfont, Chenies, Chesham, Chesham Bois, Amersham and Chalfont St Peter.
He said: "A lot of people say to me that this is the first time I've seen a gritter, but at 4am when we start they're bed and at 7pm when we go back you they've got their curtains closed and are watching TV."
At least 25 drivers grit 1350km of roads, or 40 per cent of the highway, every time there's a chance of snow - although currently that's reduced due to a shortage of grit.
Many of the hills in South Bucks, such as Pheasant Rise in Chessmount (cor), are so steep that the gritters are unable to drive down them. Instead, they must drive up them several times spreading grit.
A particularly dangerous stretch is Stony (cor) Lane, Latimer, where 15 cars got stuck in one day recently, and Ballinger Road (cor) where there is a steep hill with a 90 degree bend at the bottom.
Occasionally even the gritters loose control; Gordon skidded into a curb and dented his truck on Pond Park Road in Chesham recently.
Often, they must help stranded motorists to get on the move before they can spread grit. Even then, they get complaints.
Dean Alderton, 42, of Amersham, says: "A BMW had spun off the road and the back end was sticking out; I only had a small gap to get through, and he said: 'you hit my car and I'm going to sue the council'."
Vince says he even received complaints as he overtook a bottleneck of slow moving cars on London Road, when he was simply getting to the front of the queue in order to grit the roundabout at Chalfont St Giles where ice on the hill into the village was making conditions dangerous.
Gordon says: "People ring up and say they've been behind a gritter and it wasn't spreading grit, but they don't realise that sometimes our routes cross, or we have to head back to the depot when we run out."
By the time they get home tonight they'll be shattered, they say. Fortunately they all have understanding wives. Gordon says that last winter he hardly say his boys, 12 year old Connor and nine year old Kieran, so this year he booked some time off over Christmas and took them to Butlins.
Dean says: "You do get tired and irritable. It's a good job we all get on."