Roadmen kicking up a storm in Aviemore

BUSINESS operators on Aviemore's main street have expressed their anger after unannounced resurfacing roadworkers stated without warning.

With the wind whipping around, dust and dirt was soon getting everywhere while the businesses were going nowhere.

"It's a real pain," said café manager Kevin Grigsby, "and what we can't take is the lack of concern that the roads department showed in all this."

He runs the award-winning Cobbs coffee shop on Grampian Road.

Mr Grigsby said: "They just turned up on Tuesday morning and set up the resurfacing without giving us the slightest notification. That meant that we – like others – had just set out all our street tables and seats and people had begun to use them.

"Then all hell broke loose – along with the surface of Grampian Road. It's been dry enough for so long that everything's dusty enough without raking it all up as well.

"It's been an impossible situation and so many of us simply had to clear the furniture away again, and that's the way it was again today.

"It's a complete mess and it's so thoughtless. It just would have been nice if anyone at the Highland Council had thought to notify us all that this was going to be happening right in our busiest time of year.

"Maybe the road does need doing but does it have to be done right in the middle of the season like this? Particularly the way the weather has been."

Other operators on the busy street felt the contract should have been carried out earlier in the year before the dry spell had done its worst.

One café manageress, who did not wish to be named, said: "The whole point about not receiving any notice about all this disruption is that we don't even know how long it's all going to take.

"Is this days, or weeks?

"How much are our customers going to have to put up with?"

A Highland Council spokesperson told the Strathy yesterday: "At a meeting of the Highland Council's Badenoch and Strathspey area committee in February, councillors approved a roads maintenance programme for 2018/19 for the area.

"Included in the programme was the B9152 Grampian Road, Aviemore, for surface dressing for the width of 7m, a length of 1500m and 10,500 square metres.

"The overall surface dressing budget in the paper to committee for the South Badenoch area was £219,100 included in which was this project – which was identified as one of around eight surface dressing projects.

"Road works and resurfacing is required to take place during summer months."

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