Heheheheh, went out laning today. Lots of snow still about, which has incidentally just started again here! Some of the lanes hadn't been driven since the first snows so were somewhat deep and with very icy puddles, dips etc. A lot were windblown clear with rock=hard mud ruts, so a real variety of terrain, 'specially on south-facing tracks where the snows and ise had melted, made it a really interesting drive.
Looks a top day out Paul, I got to browsing your piccys and noticed we we both out caravanning in the Snow last Easter :-)
Lee D
Yeah, had a blast .. everything from deep (ish) mudholes that were in the sun to virgin snow. Out for about six hours or so, doing local lanes to me, sort of a loop round Maltby to Retford to Bawtry. Easy stuff for newcomers really. Lad who was in the Defender has only had it for a couple of weeks and it was his first time laning, hence the easy stuff. ;)
LOL, we're definitely year-round campers/caravanners ... we spent New Years Eve in the caravan, 70's themed night fancy dress, had a right blast!!
Had four vans in a square, all with awnings up facing into the Gazebos in the middle, Sound System, Karaoke, Bar, Buffet, fully carpetted, Patio Heaters and all the trimmings .. a most excellent night.
Think we went seventeen weekends 'vanning last year and have about nine booked so far . not counting a week in Wales camping and green-laning I've got booked ... ;)
There doesn't seem to be much snow compared to what I had here (Dorset), even the pinz span some wheels on the tarmac roads on some of the steeper hills. Some pics and a little bit of video here;
Can't fault you. I love getting out in the van.
Well no, this was sunday, yesterday, most of it had gone!
I've been off work for three weeks with a trapped nerve, so couldn't even get out till this weekend . ;)
Nice.
The worst day for driving here was Friday, with Monday 3rd being about as bad, road closures and a few vehicles abandoned with cars on the roads slipping into oncoming traffic despite driving at less than walking pace. On some of the roads in a normal car, no matter how you drove on the roads around here you weren't going to get far on some bits what with the camber of the road or the steepness of the hills. Most of the time it was OK in a normal car though, but a bit trickier in a lorry or van. There was very little traffic so most people weren't chancing it. Being able to go down a hill but not back up it then finding you couldn't go up the next hill meant that being trapped in troughs was a real risk, and there's a *lot* of troughs around here.
It's amazing looking at the level of ignorance on the BBC "Have Your Whinge" forums with people saying it's entirely normal and we get snow this bad every winter and so on. There were the usual comments about how people in the south can't cope while those up north and in scotland "just get on with it", I've got friends up north and family in Scotland and we swapped pictures, I had it far worse here than they did and a few miles from me it was far worse still, with 100 or so motorists being trapped on a major route overnight with even the police and councils not able to get them out safely.
Damned shame, it was great fun thundering around in snow so compacted even tractors weren't always reaching the tarmac. Laning was good, the snow off-road hadn't been compacted so I could cut through it to the ground underneath, it was harder going on some of the roads, mostly it was OK but some hills were pretty bad. I didn't even try the ones that are so steep I have to drive in 2nd gear in good weather! (Well, third gear, but 1st on the pinz is a crawler gear so just never gets used on road).
Weather reports for my area have shown that I should be in the middle of a heavy snowstorm lasting all day, shame it's not the case, just rain! More snow please!
LOL, we're suposed to be at -2, with no snow, I believe ... trouble is we've had sun all morning and if you're out of the wind it's almost summery!
... except for when the flurries of very fine powdery snow come, then the temperature does drop.
We're in a flood plain valley, so mostly the snows miss us, they tend to get channelled to one side or the other and drop on Sheffield, but even so we still got about 2" one day, froze for two days then another
4" fall, which made it really treacherous.Mind, our lass made it into work in her Micra every day ... I guess it's light enough to almost float over the stuff ... ;)
I've just been slumming on the BBC HYW forums again, just spotted this one, it's the 11th most recommended post;
-------------------- And almost all 4x4's are just big heavy cars. A lighter 2 wheel drive car is lighter and therefore needs less grip to manouever.
Farmers in their fields don't use 4x4s, they use ford cortinas and clapped out vauhalls. Why?
They're cheaper They're easily replaceable They work as well as 4x4s
--------------------
Just how clueless are people? I've never seen farmers "in their fields" using a cortina or vauxhall instead of a landy or a 4wd pickup. While it's true that a heavy road-going 4x4 on wide road tyres can sometimes do worse than a lighter car on narrow grippy tyres, it seems the anti-4x4 brigade are alive and well on the beeb's moron-collecting pages. A good proportion of the highest recommended posts are anti-4x4 rants, still claiming that no-one buys one for any reason other than to "show off wealth", plainly they've not seen the prices of 4x4s. I was listening to a radio programme when the host commented that it was amusing that the first cars to spin off the road into hedges in the snow were always the 4x4s... How can people be so simplistic.
In message , Ian Rawlings writes
Eh bah gum When I were a lad up north we used to call this weather summer.
Because they are simpletons?
We've been on standby to assist West Midlands Ambulance Service in Staffordshire most of the last couple of weeks and have been called out to help out stranded ambulances three times.
Will the anti 4x4 brigade please put stickers on their windows - "We would rather die than be rescued by a 4x4". Then we will leave them to their principles.
I wonder how many refused help on the A38 recently when they were cut off in the snow.
I've just come back from driving a nice easy lane in the hills above Mere, normally it's nice and easy, but despite there being no snow on the roads and almost none on the fields either side, on this track it was about a foot and a half of deep, hard snow that even got the pinzgauer stuck.
I got it out with about 4-5 minutes of work with a spade, just in time for the builders to show up with their spades. They took some photos of themselves posing next to the stuck pinzgauer (just before I drove it out) and SMSed them to their boss, who didn't believe the snow was bad as he's in Poole and doesn't have any..
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