The thorny problem of walking on roads and pavements has raised its head again during the cold weather of recent days. With snow forecast for the next day or two, and a yellow weather warning issued, the council will be working ’round the clock’ to clear snow and ice.

If the road or pavement near you is not cleared then there is information below to help you report it.

If you have to go out for a walk or to the shops and the pavement is icy then apparently the best way is to walk like a penguin according to an old tweet from NHS24.

There are grit bins all over Edinburgh which are meant to be used by householders e-learning their own paths and pavements. If you don’t know where yours is then check this map here.

If you put in your street name then (after a short delay) it will show you the nearest grit bins to the address. There is a useful guide here to clearing the pavement outside your home – including some fashion advice – basically advising you to wrap up warm.

There’s also information about which streets and pavements are treated first with grit – these are priority 1 routes.

As at today there are over 1,000 bins which need to be refilled. Cllr Hal Osler explained this morning that each two man team can fill between 40 and 50 bins each day, so if your bin is on the list it ought to be refilled by the weekend. And if it is empty then you can report it here.

And if you have to drive on roads maintained by Transport Scotland then have a look here to see where gritters such as The Incredible Ice Bear or Mary Queen of Salt are currently working.

The council set out earlier in the week what it does to treat the roads in the city. Transport Convener, Cllr Lesley Macinnes, said on Monday: “Like many other areas of Scotland, our staff have been working tirelessly and as quickly as possible to tackle the ice which set in after showers of freezing rain overnight. We gritted all priority routes last night which includes routes to hospitals, bus routes and other areas that most need it. We did this again today and we are gritting category two and three routes now that the easing in conditions has allowed us to do this. We have thousands of roads and footpaths/cycleways in Edinburgh and it also hasn’t helped that due to very low temperatures grit on footpaths and cycleways will take longer to be ground into ice than on roads so as low temperatures continue please take extra care if you need to be out and about.

“Our staff will continue to work round the clock to grit as much as we can while this cold snap continues. My thanks too to all the residents who’ve been out gritting local neighbourhood streets – we’re filling grit bins up again as quickly as we can and we’re deploying additional resource from other services to help us to do this over the course of the coming week.”

In Holyrood Park there were scenes of icy pavements which made it difficult for anyone to walk there. Since the roads remained open to cars at certain times of the day, pedestrians could not easily use the roadway.

A Historic Environment Scotland spokesperson said: “Like other green spaces across the city and beyond it is not our current practice to grit or treat paths or roadways in Holyrood Park. When ice/snow is forecast additional warning signage is erected at entrance points around the park to raise awareness amongst all users of the conditions. The City of Edinburgh Council do grit some sections of Queen’s Drive as part of their winter gritting programme. We keep our approach under regularly review and make adjustments where required.”

The Scottish Government has put out an information video about getting ready for winter here:

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Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.