A Little Bit of Snow…
Cars in the Snow
…causes so much chaos!
This morning was the journey from hell to work. Not that I got there!
It all started when we were woken at around 5am by Liam who was asking for a feed. As I got up to see to him, I had a quick look out of the window to see how bad the overnight frost had been. It didn’t seem too bad. I went into Liam’s room and changed his nappy, while Gemma went downstairs to prepare his bottle.
But as I was returning to our room to feed Liam, I caught a glance through the window-blinds of the first flakes of snow falling. It was falling quite fast. By the time that Liam had finished his feed there was a good covering on the ground, but the snowfall appeared to have stopped. We settled back into bed to get a few more minutes of sleep before the alarm went off.
I climbed out of bed as the alarm went off and took a look out of the window. In the time that we had gone back to sleep another flurry of snow had fallen, taking the depth to a good inch or two. Not a problem I thought, should be fairly easy to drive through.
After going through the usual routine of getting ready, I headed out into the cold. Once the car was clear I set off for work. Normally, my journey to work takes around 45 minutes to an hour to cover the 40 mile trip.
About half a mile from the house, I ran into my first queue of traffic. After sitting in this queue for around ten minutes, I decided to do a U-turn and head in another direction. BIG mistake.
I headed along the alternative route and very soon came up on another queue of traffic. Judging by this second queue, there was going to be traffic everywhere, so there was probably little point in looking for another alternative. So the decision was to sit it out.
I had left the house at 7am, and by the time I was in the second queue it was already 7.45am. On a normal day, I would have just about been at work by that time! During the next hour, it was very slow progress. I must have moved around 100 yards. This was not good!
Gradually, the traffic edged forward, and once through a major junction, the traffic seemed to ease, which gave me some hope of getting to work. However, it was false hope. I travelled about a mile and a half without too much trouble, but as the motorway approached, all sense of progress disintergrated.
I was back into gridlock. By this time it was getting close to 10am. I had been on the road for about 3 hours and my progress was about 5 miles! While I was sitting in this queue, I was seriously thinking about giving up and going home. I hadn’t moved again for about 15 minutes, and then the snow began to fall quite heavily again. That was the final deciding factor. It was not worth sitting in traffic to finally get to work to then have to leave early because the snow starts falling again.
It then took me a further 45 minutes to get back home. But as I travelled back I thought about all the other drivers heading in the other direction, who were not going to reach their destiniation any time soon.
I cannot believe how much disruption a little bit of snow can cause. I know that we don’t have a great deal of snow in the UK nowadays, but surely it is something that we can all cope with.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day, and that I can get to work.
Fingers crossed!
Themocracy
I know what ya mean, Gareth. It sounds as though you had to go through a freakin obstacle course to get to work.
The problem we have over here is that they don’t bother to clear off the snow and ice from what they call the “secondary” roads. I live on a secondary road that sits on top of a small mountain. You would think it would be a priority to get a plow truck to come up here and clean off the road since the hospital is up here. When it snows more than a couple inches in this area, you really risk your life when trying to make it into town.
It was just the fact that there really wasn’t that much snow on the ground. In the UK if we get a little snow, all hell breaks loose. We’re just not used to it anymore.