A hamlet which was cheekily immortalised by late presenter Sir Terry Wogan has declared war on souvenir hunters who constantly steal its famous road signs.
Thieves have regularly targeted the official place names for Cock Bridge in Aberdeenshire – but now the fed-up council is working on ones which are “tamper proof”.
Wogan regularly made fun on air of the settlement – home to less than 100 people – which is in the Cairngorms National Park.
Aberdeenshire Council previously said it was “disappointing” that the place names had been stolen but replacements were on order and will be installed “as soon as possible”.
But they were stolen again last summer. The signs were also a target for people to plaster stickers – such was the eye-catching notoriety of the place name.
But since the summer the hamlet has been without a visible name.
Now Aberdeenshire Council is working to restore Cock Bridge’s title to its rightful place – for good.
A spokesman said: “We are aware of the issues with this sign and are working to replace it using more robust tamper-proof fixings.” The road often disappears under a blanket of snow in winter and is known locally as “the Lecht” – taking the name of the nearby ski centre.
The road is one of the highest in the UK and usually the first in Scotland to be affected by snow. It is frequently closed during the winter.
On his BBC Radio 2 show, Wogan – who died in 2016 at the age of 77 – helped bring the Cock Bridge to Tomintoul road and local postmistress Mrs MacKay to fame.
In 1999, after he criticised the council for never being prepared for the snow, locals wrote in to point out it was not the local authority that cleared the snow but rather Mrs MacKay, the silver-haired postmistress and her silver-handled shovel.
She was doing the best she could, they insisted. For the next decade listeners would phone in with sightings of the near mythical Mrs MacKay shovelling snow.
Aberdeenshire is no stranger to rude-sounding place names, being home to the hamlets of Backside and Brokenwind too.
Local councillor Geva Blackett said Cock Bridge isn’t the only sign being stolen in her ward.
She said: “Those signs continually get targeted as do another lot in my ward – the signs for Lost.
“People who take them think it’s amusing and they end up on somebody’s wall as a souvenir. But every time they are replaced it costs money, which means another pot hole doesn’t get filled or a school book doesn’t get replaced.”
Last year a fundraiser got his rude-map out for a moped trip to Britain’s 48 naughtiest street and place names.
Paul Taylor, 43, rode 1800 miles from Shitterton in Dorset to Twatt in Orkney. Other places included Ass Hill in Dorset and Bradford’s Slack Bottom Road.
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