Well, my faith in the ability of my new M&S tyres to deal with mud, and therefore presumably snow, has taken a severe hit. Last Thursday lunchtime I went to see how my new friend Alison was getting on with her house move. Three stout worthies were busy filling up two vans with her contents. One 7 tonner parked in the main entrance and an already filled Luton sized van parked in the back driveway. So I couldn't drive into the property as usual by either gate and parked as far onto the verge of the single track road as I could so other vehicles could get past.
I came away with a few tins of very old Hammerite, a dustbin, some flourescent light tubes and a number of other odds and sods she didn't want, plus a tummy full of hot soup she'd made for everyone when they had a break at lunchtime. So not an entirely wasted trip.
Normally I drive into her driveway, park, reverse back out and go back the way I came but being stuck at the side of a single track road I had to carry on the way I was pointing until I could turn round. A few hundred yards further down there's a house I could have done that in easily enough but before I got there I came across a field entrance. In fact two entrances directly opposite each other to fields on both sides of the road where the farmers get in with their tractors. Both fields were bare and freshly ploughed after the recent harvest and of course waterlogged seeing as how it never bloody stops raining up here.
However, did I care? Not a bloody jot. I've got M&S tyres on so clearly I can drive just as well in mud as I can on tarmac obviously or it wouldn't say "M&S" on the tyre sidewalls. So I picked a field to turn round in, drove into it and promptly sank to the axles in something that had the consistency of porridge to a depth of about a foot.
Bollocks!
The harder I tried to get out the further I sank. Eventually when the front bumper was firmly beached on the soil I concluded that M&S tyres are not an absolute guarantee that you can drive through freshly ploughed deep wet soil with the aplomb of a tractor. This perturbed me considerably. Exactly what Michelin mean by the M part of the M&S letters on the sidewall is now a mystery again. I had assumed it meant the ability to drive with gay abandon in any depth of mud but apparently it only means you might do slightly better in mud than a non M&S tyre shod vehicle but still about 99% worse than a tractor would do.
I trudged back down the road to Alison's house in deep dudgeon and explained my predicament. "Do you have a tow rope?" I asked and she said yes but it turned out they'd already packed it and no one knew where it was. I eventually found a goodly length of three core flex which would no doubt take a fair pull and set off back to the car with the head removal worthy and the Luton van.
More bollocks!
There's no bloody tow hitch on the back of a Ford Focus! Or the front for that matter. There's a plastic panel in the bumper over what might turn out to be a tow hitch location but when I felt up behind it there was only the back end of a metal tube with no apparent hitchy bit sticking out of it. The removal worthy was all set to attack the plastic panel with a pair of secateurs before I stopped him as he would have no doubt buggered it and still not found anywhere to tie a rope to. Eventually he produced an old car mat, got down on that on the mud in his boilersuit and tied a length of strapping round my back axle.
By this time some snooty looking woman in a Range Rover had driven up and stopped as the Luton van was blocking the track and sat watching the developing scenario. Once my car was hooked up to the Luton it pulled me out without a murmer. As I finally came back onto the road and when I was facing her car she was laughing her bloody t*ts off at me. Cow!
We untied the strapping and I drove off in abject humiliation.
This doesn't bode well for my ability to deal with deep snow. I thought the S bit of M&S meant snow was no longer a problem but clearly the M bit doesn't mean mud is a trivial issue either. I may have to rethink my position on adverse road conditions. I will at least stop driving into fields.