A Tale of Three Holes

A couple of weeks ago I was awoken early on a Sunday morning by a horrendous racket outside my bedroom window.  Startled, I rose and looked out of the window to the heartsinking sight of workmen breaking up the tarmac and making a large hole in the road to the side of the house.  This task apparently required a crew of three.  Once they had got the hole under way they retreated to the cab of their lorry and out came the flasks for a tea break.  They sat there for about an hour until another truck arrived with yet more workmen who had a look in the hole then joined their colleagues for another tea break.  A quick word with them elicited only the information  that they were from the Water Board, so presumably they were looking for the source of a leak.  Eventually they all put their tools into the back of the lorry and drove off.   The next day an enormous truck with an excavator grab turned up with a couple of chaps, who picked up all the rubble and earth which the previous crew had left piled up at the side of the hole.  They first had to remove the safety railings and posts which had been placed around the hole.  When they had removed most of the detritus with their big shiny toy, they took out brooms and carefully swept all the small dust and mess up, leaving the area clean and tidy.  The question is  ... WHY?  Why did they take it away instead of putting it back into the hole?   After carefully replacing the safety railings they piled back into their huge vehicle and drove off.  After yet another three days another crew arrived, filled the hole in and replaced the tarmac on top of it.
Three days later a van turned up with two workmen who examined another part of the road but seemed perplexed by the setts.  They were so baffled they had to go and sit in their van for a while to think about it before driving away.  An hour later they were back with a supervisor who appeared in another van, they inspected the road again then had a meeting in the van before the supervisor got back into his own van and left.  Next time I looked out, the men had removed the setts and carefully piled them up at the side of the road, they then dug yet another hole and placed yet more safety railings around it.  These were a real pain because of the position they were in right on a bend in the road which created problems for cars trying to get round them.Two days later the big truck with the excavator grabber turned up and did its thing again, leaving the area around the hole clean and tidy once again, - these two are very good at cleaning and tidying - bet they would make wonderful house-husbands. When they arrived though, the first thing they did was to drive over the warning signs advising of roadworks and a narrowed road!!   Then sure enough, a day or so later we had yet another crew on site, filling in the hole.    Despite my reservations about how they might repair the road surface they did a good job of replacing all the blocks leaving little sign of disturbance.   The neighbourhood breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Well that was a bit premature!

A few days later they were back and we went through the whole rigmarole again, with even more inconveniently placed safety signs and railings, the visits from the three different crews and all their various accoutrements.  This time however they made their hole around the inspection chamber and judging from the muddy stains on the road they may just have found what they were looking for this time, but as I didn't see any signs of any repair work being undertaken here (or in the two previous holes) I won't hold my breath.  They left yesterday - Thursday - so they will probably be back on Monday or Tuesday to make more of a jigsaw of the road.