When she was little, reporter Deborah Johnson always wanted to drive a snow plough.Yesterday, she joined drivers on the front line in a battle to keep roads clear...

THE skies are grey and there's snow in the air.

Children on the streets squeal with delight as they watch the flakes fall.

But for the snow plough drivers at the Durham County Council depot in Bowes, County Durham, the winter weather is not such good news.

Worse still is the weather forecast, which predicts the conditions aren't going to get much better.

The ploughs are on 24-hour call to make sure the region's roads are made safe, battling the elements through the night.

Alexander Briggs has a route through Barnard Castle and across the A66, which takes two hours on a clear day. It is 11am and he's near the end of a ten-hour shift.

He has been twice round the route already, shifting snow and pouring grit onto the icy roads.

This is only his second week driving a snow plough, and he admits the cold snap has been a baptism of fire.

"I've definitely been thrown in at the deep end, but I can't think of a better way to get started.

"I'm still at the stage where battling these conditions is a bit of a novelty."

Driving through Teesdale, the scene is like something from a Christmas card - fields covered in fresh snow, frozen streams, children on sledges flying down the slopes.

But as beautiful as it is now, the situation only a few hours before was very different.

"Early this morning, the snow was just driving at me, I couldn't see more than a few feet," said Mr Briggs.

"It was black dark, and we don't have headlights, we have spotlights that shine from the top of the plough, so they don't light very far in front of you.

"You just had to crawl round, it was 15 miles an hour all the way. It was awful."

Negotiating a snow plough round some of the roads we encounter is not an easy task. Although most drivers give way to the plough - obviously not fancying their chances against such a huge yellow mass - tackling some of the hairpin bends is cutting it fine, to say the least.

"The plough on the front is wider than the rest of the vehicle, so you've got that to consider when you're driving past cars or on narrow roads," said Mr Briggs. "Luckily, I haven't had any tricky situations yet, but if you came up against a lorry or bus on some of these bends, you'd have problems.

"The trick is to keep the edge of the plough on the driver's side lined up with the white lines on the road - but when they are covered in snow, that's almost impossible."

The roads are relatively clear by this time, largely thanks to the toils of the snow ploughs during the night. The temperature is freezing, and there's no sign of a thaw, so another busy night is on the cards.

But for Mr Briggs and the team, that's part of the job.

"The roads need to be clear, people need to go places. So as long as there's a job that needs doing, we'll always be around doing it," he said.