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Still little or no snow up in Cambridgeshire so decided that we should go and collect the Fiat Doblo I'd accidently won via an ebay 'best offer'.
The car/van thingy was located down in Petersfield in West Sussex/ Hampshire, featuring prominently in the News 24 'breaking news' about drivers getting stuck....
Get past Baldock on the A1 and its like a scene from a disaster movie as we're bimbling along on an empty southbound whilst the northbound is clogged with snow covered cars and trucks crawling along as if trying to escape.
Snow starts to come down heavily past Hatfield and its 40mph - I find trucks to drive behind to clean the windscreen as the washer jets have frozen up again...
M25 - slow, snowy but everybody is behaving themselves except the twats in audis with their ******* foglights on.... :roll:
Our destination is the A3/ A272 and as the message boards quaote it as shut, my missus starts to worry. The RDS updates were painting a picture of deep snow the further south we went.
A3 - has there been a war?? Is it Sunday? It was so bloody quiet! We were the only car for miles with so few actual people out and about, even past Guilford it was quiet.
The snow had eased off but we could start to see how much had landed overnight with some fantastic snow scapes. Heavily laden trees leaning over the road, single lane by now. The road itself was free of slush and well gritted, 45 to 50mph was fine.
Then the scenes changed to a weird Dali esque moon scape with huge wind shaped drifts and abandoned cars becoming more frequent. Wheelie bins were hilarious! They looked like mushrooms...
Then, somewhere near 'Brook' - the A3 was coned off with settled snow on the outside lane giving a curb at least 8 inches deep. 'Traffic' (us, a tractor, a film crew and a local) was diverted back to the A31 to Farham and Alton (to rejoin the A272). A local chap who'd come out to look said that even with winter tires, local knowledge and a Hilux, he'd had serious problems just driving 2 miles on local roads. He was giving up and going back home.
At this point Lillian wanted to go back but I thought 'bollocks' as this weather was set to continue and it could be just as bad to come back another day to find the car was a pup. And besides, I'm a tight git and didnt want to drive all that way again...
With a very nervous Lillian I drove back to the main road with the snow hard and white and scraping the underneath of the car (it was that deep).
The A31 was just deep, salty, slushy and again, spookily quiet. It wasnt until we got to the A272 that Winter really showed us what had gone on that night. I've never seen so much snow! We lost count of abandoned cars with snow at least a foot deep on the roof. Buses at crazy angles, battered cars that had either been hit after they were parked or crashed before. I asked Lillian not to anger the 'Centre Snake' and appease him by taking all her clothes off later :twisted:
The centre snake was the thick ribbon of ice and snow down the centre of the road that would catch you out and send you off into a ditch...
Anyway, just about every model of 4x4 was wafting around looking for stuck people or just out and about because they could whilst, we the idiots, were doing pretty well in a front drive Passat. We had to negotiate fallen trees, abandoned buses/ trucks and badly parked cars whilst people were digging their motors out.
On the whole it was pretty fun but with adrenaline constantly pumping, it was exhausting. The only idiot we came across was a BMW with snow chains crawling along and moaning as I overtook him at a blinding 26mph...
The Doblo? Great, ugly, new tires, ugly, service history, ugly, one owner and an MP3 CD already installed. Hot coffee from the sellers and a much needed wee stop...
Journey home was far less interesting... sorry.
pics from the missus' Blackberry later.
The car/van thingy was located down in Petersfield in West Sussex/ Hampshire, featuring prominently in the News 24 'breaking news' about drivers getting stuck....
Get past Baldock on the A1 and its like a scene from a disaster movie as we're bimbling along on an empty southbound whilst the northbound is clogged with snow covered cars and trucks crawling along as if trying to escape.
Snow starts to come down heavily past Hatfield and its 40mph - I find trucks to drive behind to clean the windscreen as the washer jets have frozen up again...
M25 - slow, snowy but everybody is behaving themselves except the twats in audis with their ******* foglights on.... :roll:
Our destination is the A3/ A272 and as the message boards quaote it as shut, my missus starts to worry. The RDS updates were painting a picture of deep snow the further south we went.
A3 - has there been a war?? Is it Sunday? It was so bloody quiet! We were the only car for miles with so few actual people out and about, even past Guilford it was quiet.
The snow had eased off but we could start to see how much had landed overnight with some fantastic snow scapes. Heavily laden trees leaning over the road, single lane by now. The road itself was free of slush and well gritted, 45 to 50mph was fine.
Then the scenes changed to a weird Dali esque moon scape with huge wind shaped drifts and abandoned cars becoming more frequent. Wheelie bins were hilarious! They looked like mushrooms...
Then, somewhere near 'Brook' - the A3 was coned off with settled snow on the outside lane giving a curb at least 8 inches deep. 'Traffic' (us, a tractor, a film crew and a local) was diverted back to the A31 to Farham and Alton (to rejoin the A272). A local chap who'd come out to look said that even with winter tires, local knowledge and a Hilux, he'd had serious problems just driving 2 miles on local roads. He was giving up and going back home.
At this point Lillian wanted to go back but I thought 'bollocks' as this weather was set to continue and it could be just as bad to come back another day to find the car was a pup. And besides, I'm a tight git and didnt want to drive all that way again...
With a very nervous Lillian I drove back to the main road with the snow hard and white and scraping the underneath of the car (it was that deep).
The A31 was just deep, salty, slushy and again, spookily quiet. It wasnt until we got to the A272 that Winter really showed us what had gone on that night. I've never seen so much snow! We lost count of abandoned cars with snow at least a foot deep on the roof. Buses at crazy angles, battered cars that had either been hit after they were parked or crashed before. I asked Lillian not to anger the 'Centre Snake' and appease him by taking all her clothes off later :twisted:
The centre snake was the thick ribbon of ice and snow down the centre of the road that would catch you out and send you off into a ditch...
Anyway, just about every model of 4x4 was wafting around looking for stuck people or just out and about because they could whilst, we the idiots, were doing pretty well in a front drive Passat. We had to negotiate fallen trees, abandoned buses/ trucks and badly parked cars whilst people were digging their motors out.
On the whole it was pretty fun but with adrenaline constantly pumping, it was exhausting. The only idiot we came across was a BMW with snow chains crawling along and moaning as I overtook him at a blinding 26mph...
The Doblo? Great, ugly, new tires, ugly, service history, ugly, one owner and an MP3 CD already installed. Hot coffee from the sellers and a much needed wee stop...
Journey home was far less interesting... sorry.
pics from the missus' Blackberry later.
