please empty your brain below
I'm not sure if that's our milko you spotted in action. We're not far from there, and he usually comes round sometime after 9, which isn't exactly as convenient as it could be.

While the beacon you've pictured might not have a shield on it anymore, it's certainly not bereft of British Gas branding.

martin | 23.02.21 - 7:28 a.m. | #

As you took a photograph of the airport byelaws, does that make you guilty of using "apparatus for ... recording ... of images"?

Tim W. | 23.02.21 - 7:30 a.m. | #

Milk float - an 'F' 1989 registration is quite late, although the NHS did have similar vehicles for moving supplies around larger sites.

There isn't a 'The EAST', presumably because that's generally where London is, although if you were driving from Bristol to Lincoln what did you aim for before SatNav?

Still Anon | 23.02.21 - 7:35 a.m. | #

My milk is still delivered by electric float.

They still make them.

timbo | 23.02.21 - 7:38 a.m. | #

I wrote this post a couple of days back about milk deliveries in Battersea, where Milk&More still use real milk floats based near Wimbledon - including a 4am live action photo! The milk float sound is quite distinctive. They occasionally arrive later in the day on a vehicle of more modern design (also pictured), which I presume is what happens when the somewhat ‘vintage’ floats have technical problems.

David | 23.02.21 - 7:38 a.m. | #

The manual doesn't state when the North West would give way to the lakes, presumably the lake district. I suppose once you're past the southernmost point of the Pennines around Macclesfield, you're in the North West, so the North West signs must vanish, to be replaced by "the lakes" and "Scotland"

Perhaps an idle afternoon on Streetview can locate the geographical limits of these signs.

Ian | 23.02.21 - 7:48 a.m. | #

Not a regional destination in the sense above, but a standard, not tourist, roadsign pointing to Swaledale (containing several villages, only Reeth signposted) can be found in Nateby in Cumbria.

A few metres further on is a sign saying you've passed the last petrol for 22 miles, amended to showing no distance as the garage in Reeth is now shut. The B6270 over to Keld is a pretty wild ride for the Google maps virtual tourist.

Putters | 23.02.21 - 8:12 a.m. | #

Ken from Parker Dairies delivers to Bow bright and early whatever the weather. A global pandemic doesn’t stop him.

Ernie | 23.02.21 - 8:18 a.m. | #

There are a few rogue "East Anglia" signs, for example on the M25 ahead of the A12 exit.

CG | 23.02.21 - 8:23 a.m. | #

Funnily enough only last week I noticed a 'milk float' around my parts of north London (N8) and thought how ahead of their time they were. The photo you have could have been been my street in the mid-70s, not quite the Unigate livery but similar housing stock, London plane tree, wooden telegraph pole... I almost hear Ernie rattling his empties.

PJS | 23.02.21 - 8:31 a.m. | #

The Pentonville Road sign for the NORTH appears to point down a small side road with a 20mph speed limit. Reminds me of Ian Dury's "It takes a lot longer to get up North the slow way".

The ice cream van challenges the definition of non-essential retail or outdoor hospitality.

kev | 23.02.21 - 8:44 a.m. | #

The A2 on the Isle of Man also has "The NORTH" and "The SOUTH" on its road signs, which is quite amusing on an island only about 30 miles long.

Medford | 23.02.21 - 8:51 a.m. | #

There are definitely Milko's in floats in Hornsey/Crouch End but you have to be up early to see them

Johnny Topaz | 23.02.21 - 9:12 a.m. | #

Medford: it's not a sign, but when you get off the ferry in Yell, there's a helpful 'North' painted on the road. There's not really not all that much further north you can go from there.

The most northerly proper 'The NORTH' sign I've seen was somewhere near Inverness.

martin | 23.02.21 - 9:19 a.m. | #

That ice-cream van is either doggedly optimistic or optimistically dogged. It was in position and open for business when I ran past sometime before 8am on Sunday 21st. Not many takers at that point…

CJS | 23.02.21 - 10:03 a.m. | #

My parents in Burnt Oak have had continuous milk delivery for 60 years. Doing a postcode search it seems likely that the company they now have is The Milk Company, based in Wembley, though I can't say if their floats are electric. I'd like to think so.

I guess people who buy a daily coffee would think nothing of forking out £2.80 for an ice cream for the little darlings. Sounds very high to me though.

Cornish Cockney | 23.02.21 - 10:07 a.m. | #

If any vehicles should be electric, it should be ice cream vans.
Parked near children outside schools and in residential roads with their engine continuously running - an air pollution disaster!
EV batteries are powerful enough to run the engine and the freezers/machines.

Cornish Cockney | 23.02.21 - 10:10 a.m. | #

Checking Google Street View at the start of the A14 at the junction with the M1 and M6, the A14 (being very much a gateway to THE EAST) is signed as "Felixstowe, Kettering". Freight very much in mind.

TheLupineOne | 23.02.21 - 10:36 a.m. | #

The original reasons for daily milk deliveries have long disappeared. Nowadays nearly everyone has a fridge, and many people do not drink tea or coffee.
Newspapers are still perishable though, but rarely delivered by vehicles, in towns at least.

Malcolm of Kent | 23.02.21 - 10:51 a.m. | #

We have ice cream vans like that in Hong Kong and the current price of an ice cream is $10 (about 92p). No flakes though.

Alan | 23.02.21 - 11:08 a.m. | #

Just walked past a Mister Softee in Forest Gate where a 99 is £2 and a single cone £1.50, so I suspect the QEOP van is overpriced.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 23.02.21 - 11:24 a.m. | #

My neighbour is revving up his ice-cream van at this very moment. His first foray out in 2021 was last week, during half-term. Yesterday he was only out for about an hour, returning when the rain started. I don't know his prices as he doesn't sell his wares on our street - we have a rival van who hasn't yet appeared this year.

H SE18 | 23.02.21 - 11:38 a.m. | #

Kev, while only a side route, that's how you turn from Pentonville Road onto Upper Street, or the A1 to use its other name.

Also of interest in that photo is the pub in the background, this is The Castle where the Hatton Gardens heist was planned by 4 pensioners.

TomH | 23.02.21 - 11:41 a.m. | #

Ice cream gives a welcome if short-lived energy boost in cold weather, as I discovered when I spent three otherwise pretty miserable months in the USSR.

Jonathan Wadman | 23.02.21 - 12:08 p.m. | #

Growing up in Manor Park in the 1950’s we had two competing milk deliverers.The Co-op used a battery powered electrical float, but rather than being driven it was pulled along by the milkman and steered via a power button in the long handle. United Dairies were still using horse-drawn floats. One of my Junior school classmates was the son of one such delivery man and used to go out on the float with him. Probably would be banned now for H&S reasons.

One of the local bakers at the time, Herbert Hertes, used small electric vans to do deliveries. If I remember right they had their depot in Little Ilford Lane. There is a Bakers Court Residential Care Home where the depot used to be.

IanD | 23.02.21 - 1:36 p.m. | #

Way back when the children were little and we lived in Bow, I would keep an ear out for the first signs of urban spring. As Greensleeves, or similar, echoed distantly through the streets, I would compose my mental Letter To The Editor Of The Daily Telegraph: "Sir. I have heard the first ice cream van of the year.. " etc

J | 23.02.21 - 1:57 p.m. | #

'The North' always makes me think of someone sitting in an office in London and looking at a map. Equally annoying is when the media, map makers, London-based tourism organisations, and many others, talk about the 'North East'. In general they mean Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Darlington etc, and most people will recognise that. But for Scottish readers, and others, including me, referring to the 'North East' can mean Aberdeen.

Stuart R | 23.02.21 - 2:26 p.m. | #

I bought a 99 in Hyde Park last Summer and was asked 'I've run out of flakes, is that OK?'. The pedant in me wanted to say (a) yes it does if you're charging me the same, and (b) I'm not convinced a 99 without a flake is a 99, but by then I had my heart settled on an ice cream so I just accepted it.

I don't remember the price of it now but given the location I assume it must have been similarly overpriced.

Anders | 23.02.21 - 5:14 p.m. | #

I only realised that the milkman was still delivering to our street when two bottles of milk mysteriously appeared on our doorstep one morning having been wrongly delivered. When contacted the company said we could keep them thank you very much as they couldn't tell where they should have been delivered too.

Tones | 23.02.21 - 5:28 p.m. | #

There are (London) Millenium Beacons in Frith Grange Scout Camsite in Mill Hill (by Mill Hill East station) and in Gilwell Park.

We have milk (in glass bottles) twice a week from Milk & More, who have a modern electric fleet. Ours comes from what was a United Dairies distribution yard on Church St Edmonton which has been delivering milk since the 1930s, & was built for horse-drawn floats.

Steve | 24.02.21 - 8:34 a.m. | #

I miss the electric milk float that delivered my milk when I lived in South West London! These days I have to get it delivered by a diesel "float". They're not quite the same.

Yesterday I spotted an ice cream van in the car park near one of the local parks. It was taking up multiple parking spaces, and there's never normally one there. And it was quite busy too, especially given it was 7pm.

Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 24.02.21 - 1:06 p.m. | #

I spotted a sign in Wick for "INVERNESS AND THE SOUTH"

James C | 24.02.21 - 7:46 p.m. | #











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