DRIVING back from the Lake District yesterday morning, the A66 was its usual wonderful self.

There were wide open spaces on the dual carriageways over the summit of Stainmore - one of the most spectacular stretches of major road in Britain - where cars and lorries could break the speed limit by as much as they dared.

But then, as the carriageway began to run out, the red lights came on, the tall lorries wobbled crazily and the traffic slowed to the speed of the very slowest.

As we dropped down past Rokeby Park near Barnard Castle, a Scottish wagon decided there was just road enough to overtake a crawling silver saloon driven by two old biddies. It lurched drunkenly into the outside lane, its blue canvas flapping wildly, and rocked its way past them. It then heaved itself into the inside lane just in time as the over-anxious traffic heading west was already edging into the middle of the road in expectation of the two lanes ahead and the great speed to come.

Near Ravensworth, a chap parked up in a lay-by looked in his rear view mirror and judged there was just room enough to nip back on to the main road before a caravan with a snake of vehicles behind it condemned him to a life going nowhere. He accelerated out of the lay-by, but his judgement was wrong. The car towing the caravan flashed wildly and braked madly, the caravan see-sawed worryingly, the lorry behind it wobbled crazily...

At one point, there were three lanes of traffic in a space designed for two: a hedgetrimming tractor straddled the verge as it bowled merrily along at five miles an hour, kindly allowing those bottlenecked behind it to straddle the central white lanes and pull past - as long as those heading west agreed to nudge over themselves.

But this was nothing as to what had happened at Kirkby Thore on the Penrith side where an ageing, arthritic farmer in over-sized green Wellington boots popped up in the middle of road. His hips clearly hadn't danced for decades, but here he was happily waltzing with wagons. For as long as he remained in my rear view mirror, he was in the middle of the road, visibly buffeted by the huge lorries' draughts.

As we neared the Gilling crossroads, the crawl became slower and slower. It ground to stop-start, more stop than start. Then we saw the police jumping about in their fluorescent jackets and finally we passed the scene. The spilled blood and guts had, thankfully, been cleared away, but the cars were still there, their sides caved in, their panels torn and their frames twisted.

The cause looked obvious: in the dip of the road where speed becomes distorted, someone had made a misjudgement. Crazy, we said to each other. How can you have crossroads on such a major road?

We arrived home to yesterday's front page sticking out of the letter-box, and learned the situation might not last for much longer.

Yet in recent years, there have probably been as many accidents on the road as The Northern Echo has used variants on the headline "A66 fixed". Each scheme has become a casualty of a cutback, each proposed dualling has suffered some kind of setback. The end of this road is still a long way ahead.

REGRET of the week was not visiting the Pencil Museum in Keswick. What a draw it must be. The Keswick Reminder, a fine throw-back of a publication, reports an attempted burglary at the museum, great damage caused. Sadly, it doesn't say if the thieves were after lead from the roof.