A major traffic nightmare was averted in Cromer today by the timely arrival of a scaffolding crew.
Morning rush-hour traffic had come grinding to a halt when a wide load got stuck in the town's central, one-way, Church Street at about 8.30am.
The 14ft-wide wooden holiday lodge, on the back of a lorry, could not squeeze past scaffolding erected outside The Albion pub.
The lorry was within minutes of arriving at its destination, Forest Park holiday park, Northrepps, after a journey of more than 150 miles from Hull.
The driver managed to reverse into a bus layby allowing traffic to pass.
By a stroke of luck, the load had been followed from Fakenham by scaffolder Matt Snell who was on his way to Cromer to dismantle part of the Albion scaffolding as a pre-arranged job.
'I saw it and thought: 'I hope he's not going to Cromer because he won't get through,' said Mr Snell, of King's Lynn-based Kelly's Scaffolding.
'If we hadn't been going there anyway, I don't know what he would have done.'
After about two hours, 20ft of scaffolding had been removed, and the load made a second, successful, attempt at passing through the pinch point.
The manoeuvre took about 15 minutes as the lorry crept through with millimetres to spare, creating another long line of traffic in its wake.
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