SNOW IN DORSET: Communities rally round to help others

Outside Dorchester on Thursday, an intrepid heating engineer played the Good Samaritan to a lorry full of supplies that found itself marooned at the bottom of an impassable incline.

At around 4 pm – after several hours of heavy snow – engineer Graeme Webster was on his way to mend a boiler affected by the freezing conditions when he came across the stranded lorry.

TO THE RESCUE: Graeme Webster's van pulls the lorry

His son Sam told the Echo: “A Tesco lorry had got stuck at Monkey’s Jump roundabout, coming from Yeovil, with a full trailer of food heading towards the big Tesco store in Dorchester.

“It couldn’t get up the hill, and there was quite a lot of snow in the outside lane, so the vehicle was blocking the road and causing queues.”

Graeme, the director of Ringstead-based family heating and plumbing engineering firm Heatcare had his snow tyres on for getting around the county, and, attaching a rope to the lorry’s towbar, pulled it to the top of the slope.

Meanwhile, villagers rallied to the rescue of stranded motorists on the A354 in Winterborne Whitechurch, between Blandford and Dorchester.

Both the road in and the road out of the village traverse steep hills, leaving a number of car and van drivers in need of a helping hand.

Resident Debbie Frith said: “Both ways were really tricky, and cars were struggling to get up the hills.

“Luckily, locals came out to push people in and out.”

HELPING OUT: Villagers

Ms Frith, 47 and a freelance PA, had been on her way to a snowball fight with her daughter when she came across the relief efforts, and joined in to help out.

“I was always think that if it was me in that situation, I’d want people to help me,” she noted, adding that three van drivers on their way to Bristol had ended up staying the night in Winterborne Whitechurch village hall.

“We fed and watered them and left them bedded down in the village hall,” said Ms Frith. “They were very grateful, and left a nice note of thanks in the morning.”