THE Middleton miley is exciting interest following its appearance in Wednesday's column.

It is, you may remember, embedded in the tarmac on Middleton-in-Teesdale's County Bridge. One metal hand points north to "...idge road"; the other points south to "Greta Bri...".

It is conceivable that it is pointing to distant Greta Bridge, although the road to Greta Bridge was never turnpiked and so wouldn't have had mileposts or tolls upon it.

Even stranger is the "...idge road". Why point to Bridge Road when you are already on it?

Equally strange is that there are no figures on it. It is not pointing to Greta Bridge X miles away.

Tony Young, another milepostologist, has been in touch. He says: "The Middleton post seems quite unnecessary as a milepost since according to the maps there is a perfectly good turnpike milepost only a couple of hundred yards to the south of the Middleton Bridge which says 'Middleton ¼ ; Brough 14'.

Some maps show the Brough-Middleton road as the 'Brough under Stainmore to Middleton Bridge Trust' and the branch to Egglestone as the 'Egglestone Bridge Branch' - so I guess there are a couple of other potential 'Bridges' in local turnpikes.

But why Greta Bridge - since none of the Middleton Turnpikes gets that far?

I suppose it's too silly to suggest some Highways Engineer has relocated it from the Greta Bridge-Catterick Bridge Turnpike!.

It's not really relevant to your puzzle but in fact there were three turnpikes converging on Middleton. As well as the one from Brough, and the one from The Edge, there was also the Middleton-Alston Turnpike, going north-west from Middleton past High Force and over Yad Moss."

In conclusion? Perhaps it has been relocated from another turnpike, and if there were ever distances on it, they have been chipped out...

Any other theories?