Off the network · C
A lane, with passing places
Single-track between high hedges, blind bends, and a passing place every so often. Getting a removals vehicle in is usually possible. Getting it out again, forwards, is the question that decides whether we send one.
A lane a vehicle can enter but cannot leave forwards is worse than one it cannot enter at all.
What a lane job involves
Turning space beats width
Width gets all the attention because it is easy to imagine. Turning space is what actually strands vehicles, and reversing a loaded removals lorry out of a single-track lane with traffic behind it is a genuinely bad hour for everybody.
So the survey asks for two things: the narrowest point, and the nearest place a vehicle can turn round — and how far back from the house that is. Those two together decide the plan.
Look up
The Kent lanes are hedged and overhung, and a branch that clears a car by a comfortable margin can stop a high-sided vehicle completely. So can a telephone line sagging across a gateway, or an archway into a village courtyard.
It is the measurement nobody takes and the one obstacle that cannot be improvised around, so we ask specifically rather than hoping it comes up.
Blind bends and the local traffic
Lanes here are working roads as well as scenic ones — tractors in the fruit belt, delivery vans, school runs. A removals vehicle parked in a lane blocks all of it, so the standing point matters as much as the route.
Where we have to occupy a lane for any length of time, it is planned around the hours that cause the least trouble, and the neighbours are worth a note.
Village greens and courtyards
Several Kent villages are arranged around a green with a narrow way in and no way through. Those are surveyed as a unit — where a vehicle stands, whether it can turn on the green (usually not, and we will not drive on it), and what the carry is from the nearest firm ground.
A lane, with passing places
Questions about a lane, with passing places
01 How do you decide the vehicle?
From the lane rather than from the volume. Narrowest point, turning space and overhead clearance come first; how much there is comes second.
02 What do you need from us?
The narrowest point, where the nearest turning place is, and a look up at anything overhanging. Photographs beat descriptions on all three.
03 Will you drive on the green or the verge?
No, not without boards, and not at all where the ground is soft. We would rather carry further than leave ruts in a village green.
04 Can you reverse a long way if you have to?
A driver can, and it is slow, risky and unpopular with everybody behind. It is exactly what surveying the lane is meant to avoid.
05 What if the lane will not take a full-size vehicle?
We shuttle with a smaller one from the nearest suitable road, planned at the survey rather than decided at a gate.
06 Are the fruit-belt lanes worse in season?
Busier, certainly, with agricultural traffic that has priority in practice if not in law. It affects the hour we choose rather than whether the job happens.
What is the last road like?
Both addresses, roughly what is going, and whatever you know about the final stretch at each end. A photograph of a gateway from the road beats any description of it.