Re: Time for winter tyres again methinks

and yet the ling long was spinning all over the place late Thursday night, you could use them as a crude, limited range temperature gauge. The Michelins will go back on this week.

A year or so back I regularly did day trips from Essex to Edinburgh for work. What was very noticeable was the drop in temperature in Scotchland.

I once arrived in Edinburgh and getting into a taxi the driver remarked "what a nice day" - it was overcast and cool. An hour and half previously I had been at Stansted with full sunshine and already 20+C at

No need for winter tyres here. Last year two bad days with ice when the local council failed to salt/grit the roads until after the morning rush hour. Two days with snow and it wouldn't have mattered what tyres I had fitted. The roads were grid locked during the morning rush period. I went back home, waited 2 hours and then got to work without problems.

That's because people continue to insist that winter tyres aren't needed in the UK.

Well count yourself lucky. However you don't have our scenery, lack of traffic or relaxed way of life. I wouldn't swap any of it for your posh southern nancy boy ways I've now put behind myself. I was walking the dog up by t'farm this morning at 7.30. Of course the farmer and his chaps were already long since up and about, pottering with the beasts as they do, feeding them and such I suppose. Simple hardy folk, mainly pale and red haired and not well suited for hot sunny days in which I'm told they can burst into flames but well adapted for cold climes like this. "Hale fellow, well met" I call out to them in passing but they rarely respond. I think some of the brighter ones have a basic grasp of English but I suspect they're rathered cowed by this refined intellectual southerner suddenly in their midst and perhaps embarrassed to try and communicate.

On the odd occasion they do call back it's fairly incomprehensible and not really English as a gentleman would recognise it but I'm sure they're trying their best. Stout fellows no doubt, salt of the earth and all that. I try to make allowances. I'm sure they appreciate it. It's nice to be able to come into a new area and enhance the life of the locals, whatever their lack of refinement.

In message , Dave Baker writes

Those were my sentiments exactly when I moved from Scotland to England almost 40 years ago. I must say that its still a work in progress.

;)

You don't speak 'Coo'.

Tried to get up the farm track this morning after a hard frost overnight and ice underfoot and the Toyos decided to call it quits bigtime. I could barely set off on the flat bits nevermind the slopes even though it's rough knobbly gravel and ought to have some grip under the frost. I gave up before reaching the B road and turned round again and slithered back home. There's a steep hill on the B road to navigate whichever way I go at the top and I didn't fancy breaking down on one of those and having to go to the farmer cap in hand for a tow back with a tractor.

Anyway dug the front wintergrips out and fitted them. What a difference in traction. OK so to be honest the frost had mainly melted by the time I did that but I know what they were like last winter in snow, ice, frost or whatever the weather threw at them. Nothing phased them even on the hills. I even took to stopping half way up hills in the snow just to see if they'd pull away again but they never let me down.

I managed quite happily last year with just wintergrips on the front but it might be nice to get my mate to swap the summer rears off the rims and have the other two wintergrips there too just in case. Two more spare wheels would be handy as well. I've only got six. Then I could have a full set of wintergrips mounted on rims ready to fit each year rather than just the fronts. Can't imagine that 16" Mk1 Focus 4 stud alloys are hard to come by or very expensive.