Work to help plan essential maintenance work on one of Durham’s busiest road bridges is taking place this month (May).
Durham County Council will be carrying out investigation works on Milburngate Bridge and drivers are being warned to expect traffic disruption.
The work will take place on Sunday 10 and Sunday 17 May between 7am and 7pm.
Lane closures will be in place on the bridge between 4am and 9pm on the two days the work will be carried out.
Two lanes will remain open, allowing traffic to flow in both directions during the works.
Temporary closures of the footpaths may also be needed but only one will close at any time.
As part of the investigations, specialist testing will be carried on the concrete bridge joints and a number of trial holes will be drilled.
A noise impact assessment has been carried out and noise reduction measures will be put in place to ensure disruption to businesses and residents is kept to a minimum.
Allow extra time for journeys
John Reed, head of technical services at Durham County Council, said: “These investigation works are an essential part of the major maintenance scheme, which will begin in the summer.
“The findings will help us to ensure the maintenance work is carried out in the most efficient way in order to minimise disruption.
“We appreciate that this will cause some inconvenience to people using the bridge and we would ask people to be patient and allow extra time for their journeys during the work.”
The maintenance work in the summer, which is expected to start on Sunday 12 July, will include improvements to drainage, parapets and surfacing, concrete repairs and replacement waterproofing.
Author: Richard Hornby
Stockton Duathlon
As some of you know, Hannah and I are doing the Stockton Duathlon this weekend. Hannah is racing for a charity which helped out her grandma when she was very ill, and is racing in memory of her grandad.
As someone who has just lost their last grandparent this week, I know all too well just how big an impact grandparents have on our lives – even if we may not realise it at the time.
Hannah’s JustGiving page is linked below, and it would be really nice to give what you can – I’m not running a sponsorship campaign myself for this one, but will be making a small donation to Hannah’s 🙂
https://www.justgiving.com/Hannah-Wynn1/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=fundraisingpage&utm_content=Hannah-Wynn1&utm_campaign=pfp-share
Please give generously.
Thank you – Richard
IOP
Photographs taken by Nicolle Finch (most), Hannah Wynn (some), Richard Hornby (one). Seek photographer’s permission before downloading or copying.
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“Can I really do this?”
Yes. You can.
I’m hearing this question a lot lately, so I thought I’d answer it!
The only thing that you can do is your best, and if you’re well prepared, and if you work hard, you will succeed. There’s a lot of pressure on students to do well in exams these days, probably even more than when I was a student myself (yes, I was that young once!), and so I thought I would give a few pointers as to why panicking is a bad idea, and why you should trust yourself.
Firstly, I believe in you. Now, that might be hard to believe, given I suspect that there are people reading this post that I’ve never met, but it’s still true. If you care about your studies (and panicking about them is a good indication that you do!), if you can be bothered to put the work in – you can do well. Part of success is a mindset: if you believe in yourself, then you’ll do well. Sports coaches sometimes say “positive thinking leads to positive outcomes” – honestly, it’s true. So have faith in yourself. Human beings are naturally wired to learn – just compare yourself as a baby to the knowledge you have now – and then remember that you still have the potential to learn just as much stuff again!
Next: right now (with the exception of controlled assessments and possibly mocks), it doesn’t matter if you get things wrong. In some senses, getting things wrong is a good thing, because it shows the areas where you need to work on: as long as you take a mistake, examine it, look at why it was made, and make sure that you never make that mistake again, you’ve turned it from something negative into a positive learning opportunity. As my dad used to say: “It’s not the falling down that matters. It’s staying down.” So don’t mistakes “get to you”. Pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and carry on. You’ll be stronger for it.
Finally, in a post about motivation, it would be very remiss of me not to mention my former Head of Year, now sadly no longer with us, Wayne Jenkins. In my view, Mr. Jenkins was a great motivator. Sure, we all laughed at him at the time, but looking back, his motivational attitude surely affected students’ morale – and results in their exams! One of Mr. Jenkins’ favourite mottos was what “CAN I” really stood for:
Constant
And
Never-ending
Improvement
because, if you’re asking that question, he knew that with a bit of effort and positivity, CAN I? can be turned into Constant and Never-ending Improvement, and then can easily become I CAN.
So be positive: focus for these next four months, and turn “CAN I?” into “I CAN!” 🙂
P.S. I’m going to ban the phrase “I can’t do …” in my sessions. The correct one to use is “I can’t do … yet”. 😉