Winter Wonderland
In a break from the usual narrowboat themed posts, I thought I'd write about my journey along minor roads in the snows that hit the UK today. I was due to attend a course at Chartridge House - something to do with leadership training. I saw the 'ship' part so assumed it must be good, after all I'm refitting a canal boat.
Anyway I departed the boat at about 7:00am, IRIS looked like this in the dark.
The car was also a little covered in snow too....
Progress was slow but steady. Mat had reported that the roads were mushy but not too bad, and this certainly proved the case once I'd got out of the marina drive. Henley (center of the known universe as mentioned in previous posts) wasn't too bad either, as shown by this atmospheric shot of some traffic lights.
The journey continued towards Marlow, I made the mistake of trying to take a picture whilst driving on snow covered roads, this is the result.
A better one, taken while stationary....
Remember kids, don't take pictures and drive - I almost went into a ditch. Once I'd abandoned this idea, the journey continued to interest, with people parking on hills and generally causing chaos. Now hillstarts in snow aren't my car's forte, so I was stuck three times for about 20 minutes each trying to get going. However, I continued to make progress, through High Wycombe, Great Missenden and on to Chesham. It was here that I finally got stuck as the snow was falling heavily and compacting on the ground. This was about two miles from my final destination.
As I tried to get unstuck by some houses I noticed some locals viewing me with a degree of suspicion. Turns out that there is someone in their village with a car like mine who they don't like. Apparently it makes a lot of noise......
As more of them were gathering with pitchforks and a pitcher of tar and a bag of feathers, I felt it was time to introduce myself. Once I'd explained that I was not the local annoying idiot, but merely some idiot from Reading, it was all smiles. A few of the assembled yummy mummies helped push me a little further up the road, but alas, we were on a hiding to nothing.
We decided that pushing my car underneath an old apple tree was the best bet until the snows melted.
After a refreshing cup of hot chocolate in one of the local's houses (turns out they were sheep farmers from Switzerland) I got a lift to Chartridge house.
I got a lift back and retrieved my car in the afternoon, as I was a little worried that the locals would burn it as some sort of message to the other one. So now its sat in the car park at the back.
Just so we have some nautical themes here, I've got a picture of IRIS I took the other morning when it was -8 degrees c.
In a break from the usual narrowboat themed posts, I thought I'd write about my journey along minor roads in the snows that hit the UK today. I was due to attend a course at Chartridge House - something to do with leadership training. I saw the 'ship' part so assumed it must be good, after all I'm refitting a canal boat.
Anyway I departed the boat at about 7:00am, IRIS looked like this in the dark.
The car was also a little covered in snow too....
Progress was slow but steady. Mat had reported that the roads were mushy but not too bad, and this certainly proved the case once I'd got out of the marina drive. Henley (center of the known universe as mentioned in previous posts) wasn't too bad either, as shown by this atmospheric shot of some traffic lights.
The journey continued towards Marlow, I made the mistake of trying to take a picture whilst driving on snow covered roads, this is the result.
A better one, taken while stationary....
Remember kids, don't take pictures and drive - I almost went into a ditch. Once I'd abandoned this idea, the journey continued to interest, with people parking on hills and generally causing chaos. Now hillstarts in snow aren't my car's forte, so I was stuck three times for about 20 minutes each trying to get going. However, I continued to make progress, through High Wycombe, Great Missenden and on to Chesham. It was here that I finally got stuck as the snow was falling heavily and compacting on the ground. This was about two miles from my final destination.
As I tried to get unstuck by some houses I noticed some locals viewing me with a degree of suspicion. Turns out that there is someone in their village with a car like mine who they don't like. Apparently it makes a lot of noise......
As more of them were gathering with pitchforks and a pitcher of tar and a bag of feathers, I felt it was time to introduce myself. Once I'd explained that I was not the local annoying idiot, but merely some idiot from Reading, it was all smiles. A few of the assembled yummy mummies helped push me a little further up the road, but alas, we were on a hiding to nothing.
We decided that pushing my car underneath an old apple tree was the best bet until the snows melted.
After a refreshing cup of hot chocolate in one of the local's houses (turns out they were sheep farmers from Switzerland) I got a lift to Chartridge house.
I got a lift back and retrieved my car in the afternoon, as I was a little worried that the locals would burn it as some sort of message to the other one. So now its sat in the car park at the back.
Just so we have some nautical themes here, I've got a picture of IRIS I took the other morning when it was -8 degrees c.
posted by flatplane8 at 10:29 PM
8 Comments:
So, no taking your car to Switzerland to go skiing then?
Could take a while to get there. Snow tyres might help though.....
Why don't you get it raised and put knobbly tyres on it? Then you wouldn't be mistaken for the local drug dealer.
Dave
Driving a "car" like that in the snow... you seem so desperate for a Darwin award? :-)
http://www.darwinawards.com/
I thought local drug dealer drove BMW's - Tobias
Yeah, drug dealers usually has a good taste in automobiles :-)
I think the phrase you're looking for is 'tediously predictable taste' ;-)
driving a banana car is not really predictable. trying to drive it in the snow is probably just foolish -dave
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