A mate of mine asked me to drive him down to Cardiff to take his young son to the grandparents in my A35 van for a couple of weeks holiday, ok we can go Saturday morning stay overnight and come back Sunday so I can get to work at Tesco’s Monday, any way off we goes, when we get to Cardiff we are told there is a party at Merthyr that night and we can stop there overnight and come back to Cardiff in the morning, ok party ended around midnight and we kipped down in the front room of this house, following morning Sunday I looks out the window and said bl**dy hell where is the van, you parked it by the lamppost, what lamppost, we eventually dug the van out and drove (and I use that word very loosely) back to Cardiff, got there in time for dinner, my mate phoned the AA and asked what the road was like from Cardiff to London, impassable he was told, ok what about the road to Merthyr, also impassable, so we knew what the road from Merthyr was like so we said well we will take the road to London and see how we get on, (my van did not have a heater) so his mother gave him a hot water bottle and also gave him a tea chest full of china, anyway off we go and gets to birdlip hill, the only vehicle that had been down birdlip was a land rover and as some of you will know there was a fork at the bottom of the hill to the left and the land rover had turned left, anyway we headed down the hill going full tilt, remember the A35 wheels are not as wide as a land rover and we are going down with the offside wheels in his tracks until we hit where he had turned off, well we hit the snow bank at around 40 and got through and still made it up the other side of the hill all thanks to the weight of the china in that tea chest, well we carries on and eventually finds a pub open, so I parked up and went and had a coffee. Eventually we got back to Enfield at around midnight, frozen, my wife (of around 3 weeks) thought we had had an accident.
Following morning I drives in to Cheshunt and Tesco’s said no one is going out with the weather like this, find some shovels and clear the snow from the yard. Gets home that night and my mate is home (he lived in the flat above me) and said that he went to the doctors this morning and he got signed off with hyperthermia for a week, and he was the one with the hot water bottle.
A few weeks later we went to Cheltenham with a delivery and found the pub I had stopped at, I then found out that I had parked the van in the middle of the village green thinking I was still on the road.
All good fun when you are young, stupid and invincible.
Ballonie good story but you must have went up the A48 A436/A417. A40 ish and up Birdlip so long ago it must have took hours rather you than me back then.
peggydeckboy:
Ballonie good story but you must have went up the A48 A436/A417. A40 ish and up Birdlip so long ago it must have took hours rather you than me back then.
Hi Mate.
I have a horrible feeling that was the old A40 Ermine St in those days. The turning mentioned was the lane (it was then) to Little Witcombe.
Just looked at an old map and it shows the main road A437 up to Gloucester then through Brockworth, at the Cross Hands straight on to Birdlip, then we went Andoversford A40 on. Do not remember having a map ether. The one I have in my hand was given free in 24 parts with Wonderful Britain 15mile to the inch, just found out it was published in 1929, god it is older than me.
Ok guys and gals not so much a story this time but a weather report from way back when…1963 to be precise…i was a mere lad (just 17) and knee high to a grasshopper…about to book for my driving test…i`d had a few lessons with my brother in law and thought i was good enough to take the test… so i wondered who could say what the coldest winter they could remember…i can say that i had read about the winters of 1947 and remember my parents telling me of the hardships the year after i was born of endless grey skies, sub- zero temperatures and snow which piled into drifts of almost 15 feet…the coldest on record was as above (1963) although it had snowed on boxing day and by morning lawns, fields and village greens were buried under many inches…they would not be visible again until early march. By early January the scene was chaotic. Another blizzard had released tons of fine chrystalline snow and, driven by a severe gale, huge drifts had formed in the fields and country lanes. A fleet of snow ploughs had been mobilised but the task was almost too much.
Queues built up everywhere as motorists, without snow chains, abandoned their vehicles and walked. North and West kent virtually at a standstill.
Those living and working in Bexley and all the towns across Kent found themselves in a strange, muffled world. A few brave motorists had made the journey but only the engines could be heard as the vehicles negotiated the snow packed road surface, sliding and slithering from side to side. Shoppers dragged toboggans laden with essential supplies while the majority stayed indoors hoping they would not suffer from frozen pipes when the great thaw arrived.
But the great thaw didnt arrive - not for a long time. By the end of january scenes across the kentish coasts indicated that this was no ordinary cold spell. At Herne Bay and Whitstable the frozen waters stretched for 2.5 miles out to sea. Tugs battled against ice flows in the medway and the Thames. Twenty villages and towns on the north downs were entirely isolated.
The winter and the snowfalls went on and on and in some villages there was snow cover on 65 successive days beating the previous record in 1947 when there were 55 days. The normal pattern of wind over southern Britain had been entirely reversed by persistant high pressure bringing air off an icy continent instead of the warmer Atlantic Ocean.
In the third week of February it snowed again, but this was to be the last. By early march the snow was thinning, gently releasing several weeks of stored water and new perils - fog and floods, burst pipes and misery…previous to all this, i remember the Pea - soupers…fog or smog so thick you could barely see your hand in front of your face.i remember as a kid getting the bus home from Woolwich town centre (where it was fairly light) from the street lamps which wasnt very bright as they were gas ones and the conductor having to walk at the side of the driver to guide him along the kerb after we had left the town behind, he carried on walking as i got off the bus in Charlton Village to walk the two hundred yards down side roads with no lights to guide me, and dark eerie alleyways i passed, and a sigh of relief as i reached home safely. Those thick fogs lasted throughout the sixties and is where london earned its nickname (the smoke) and things only got better when the smokeless fuel became the new modern way to keep warm and reduce the pollution, although power stations were to change much later, luckily for me the weather was kind when i passed my driving test in that year and started on the road to become the best driver since hovis…well i lied about the last bit…just seeing if your paying attention…but this was the career i wanted…and got…more later…
I remember it well Truckyboy ! I was still at primary school. We always had a white Christmas in England back then. I can remember that Christmas eve a guy came back to the village I lived in from his travel to Australia with his new girlfriend, who had never seen snow and was in awe. One week later our village was cut off for 10 days and a group of men (my Dad included) set off trudging across 6 miles of snow pulling a very large sedge to get bread from Blakesley and bring it back to the village … And I comlain about the odd 3 feet now
Well, while we are comparing winter stories, let me tell you about the Buffalo blizzard of 1977. I was still in high school, and was on my way to go camping for the weekend with my boy scout troop when the worst blizzard for the last 100 years hit. The winds were sustained at 45 mph for 2 dys, the snowfall from that single storm varied from 39" where I lived to 62" in Amherst NY to a whopping 96" in Oswego NY. Temperatures fell from the low 30’s to about -10F that night, and stayed below 0F for a week. Snow fell every day for the next 2 weeks, until it was 5’ deep everywhere I lived, and more in other places. Amherst, a heavily populated suburb of Buffal had 7’6" snow depth. There are pistures of houses drifted over, the entire downstairs floor covered with snow, and the only access being through a second-floor window that had been shovelled out! Bufalo roads werer impassible for 2 weeks, and my scout troop spent several days ferrying emergency supplies (medicines, mostly) and carrying at-risk people out by snowmobile. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen- a city of 1.5 million people stranded in the snow!
Believe it or not, the next winter had more snow, but no storms quite as bad. Last winter, here, we had a snowfall on dec 30th, and it snowed every day until feb 2. The ground was covered until mid-march-that’s about 80 days of snow cover-then we had a last snowfall in may.
During the winter of 1993-1994, I drive through Oswego on my way to Montreal, PQ, and the snow that winter was 8’ deep, and they used augers to dig a slot through the snow, much like an alpine pass. It got down to -40 twice that winter.
the eeriest winter scene i ever saw was during november of 2000 in buffalo, ny. alex probably remembers this one. in a matter of a few hours, 3 feet of snow had fallen on the city. it snowed so hard that eventually all vehicular traffic came to a halt. it didn’t matter where you were, the motorways and the local streets all became one parking lot. One by one, people started to abandon their cars until the city looked like a scene from stephen king’s “the stand.” That is one day i wished i had a camera. It was such an incredible sight to have seen all those normally busy streets in that apocalyptic state.
Yes, I remember that storm, and actually went to Buffalo a few days later. It was only half as bad as the blizzard on 1977. If you’d like to see just how bad it was, click on this link.
Wow alex…those pictures are fantastic…and what a snow fall…it must be a nightmare trying to run a fleet of trucks when the weather is that bad…ive been out in some terrible storms and snow covered countries such as the eastern Bloc and northern turkey and always said..snow..they dont know what snow is till theyve been here..ive changed my mind now ive seen your pics..only difference is yours are in a sensible country..whereas ive seen in the eastern bloc people putting water on the roads with hoses…to clear them of ice and snow…only for it all to freeze again after a few minutes…and the snow plows that were given to them from the european countries that had bought new ones, but the drivers would always do their best…and make you comfortable in their stations if you couldnt move for a while…
have a nice day
Well, back in 1977, the NY State Thruway (Interstate 90, the major east-west highway along the northern part of the US) was closed for about 5 days before they could get it cleared. This is in flat lands at 500’ elevation, mind you-not on some mountain pass at 12,000’. Buffalo remained under a state of emergency for 2 weeks, meaning that no non-official traffic was allowed. Of course, food supplies were allowed in, but often they needed to be unloaded on the street due to docks being snowed under.
I believe Buffalois about the size of Liverpool. If you could imagine Liverpool being snowbound for 2 weeks, you have some idea of the situation we were in back then.
