The alarm woke me up at 3 a.m. after a whopping three hours sleep. I drove (with my coat on) from Leicester to Geoffs in Chester to switch vans. It must’ve been 5 a.m. -we were off! Off very slowly. Geoff, in his excitement perhaps, had forgotten to mention he’d been having a spot of bother with his gearbox. We were now having a lot of bother! Changing gear was an aggressive two-handed effort, usually taking a couple of goes. All we had to do was get up to 6th and not stop until we got to Thurso car park, then we could ring the AA to bring us home on Monday night! Ha! A simple plan – what could possibly go wrong?
“Wow, was that snow on the windscreen or just light rain?”
“Definitely snow”.
After such a mild winter, it was quite a surprise to see some snow. I hadn’t even considered it. So much time spent looking at the forecasts but never even a thought to check the ‘actual weather’. A bit daft, as twice before in the past the snow has caused us major headaches on road trips. It was getting darker. The snow was turning into a blizzard. Single carriageway and the lorries were dropping down to 20 mph., gear changes were needed and Geoff was looking stressed. I was trying not to be stressed, but definitely starting to panic a bit. We needed petrol. We also needed to keep doing 20 mph. and stay sat in the tracks of the bus in front. A quick check of Twitter to see the road situation updates and there it was: ‘Scotland expecting huge dump of snow and the ski season about to get underway this weekend’.