WHAT a great first weekend of a new year for everyone fortunate enough to be able to go for a walk.

Snowy and icy it might have been but Sunday’s blue skies meant it was awesome outdoors whether you were visiting Towneley Park or Gawthorpe, rambling on the moorland around the Grane, tramping the perimeter of Turton and Entwistle Reservoir, through Sunnyhurst Woods or meandering around Pleasington playing fields and Billinge Woods.

From high ground it was the sort of day when you could see for many miles and realise just how beautiful East Lancashire really is and how clean the air is compared with so many polluted countries.

Sadly though there weren’t so many people out enjoying our fantastic countryside.

The strong impression was that the majority were either sliding their cars around on side roads, watching TV, dragging out the Christmas trees several days early or sitting in pubs moaning about gritters or the lack of them.

On the subject of roads (no more mentions of gritters in this column) two recent stories make me wonder if I’m the only one who never ceases to be amazed at the lack of imagination and common sense shown by people paid for their expertise.

Firstly those legions of senior government and county council strategists involved with our motorway network.

Britain’s first section of motorway, the Preston bypass, better known today as the chunk of the M6 North and South of the A59 Samlesbury junction, was opened almost 52 years ago in 1958.

Yet it took until last week for boffins to announce that a number of ‘emergency crossover gates’ are to be installed in the central crash barriers of sections of the M6 in Lancashire to free the hundreds of vehicles left stranded in miles of tailbacks for hour upon hour every time there is a serious accident.

A senior Highways Agency official said: “Some drivers are unlucky enough to get caught behind incidents and that causes a whole range of challenges for us in terms of traffic management and driver and passenger welfare.”

Am I the only person who thinks that ending gridlock by giving drivers the ability to do a U turn (with police help) and escape down the other carriageway is not something that should have taken half a century to come up with?

The other story chronicled the obvious frustration being felt by people living in the rural areas around Darwen whose dry stone walls keep being knocked down by heavy goods vehicle drivers who blindly follow sat navs designed for cars and get themselves stuck in narrow country lanes.

Again this is a problem that should be simple to solve. First the relevant local authorities must erect sufficient signs warning that such roads are unsuitable for any vehicle over, say, five tonnes.

Drivers who ignore them and get themselves in a mess should then be fined and forced to repay the cost of putting right the damage they have caused.

They might then be forced to use their brains as well as their sat navs and even look at some old-fashioned maps.