Snow

It sure was a fun and eventful morning driving around North Devon today. It never ceases to amaze me how a few inches of snow here in Devon, brings the whole county to a near standstill. Maybe it’s just the fact that we don’t get snow that often and most that live here don’t get the opportunity to gain much snow driving experience.

I normally on a Friday bump into the Tookbank driver but not today, Toolbank is a customer of ours and operates from the Sowton industrial estate. Seems he got as far as Oakhampton and gave up and retuned to his depot.

So was it that bad today in North Devon? The answer is not half as bad as I have seen it before and I never once worried this morning that I was in any great danger and I would not complete what I set out to do.

That’s not to say I did do everything as I didn’t but only because I was stopped by the police from going from Okehampton to Holsworthy. I’m sure I would have had no problems getting to Holsworthy, only the road I was on was blocked by three or four Lorries that had got stuck.

A few miles outside of Okehampton the road goes down a very steep hill and at the bottom is a nasty S bend and as soon as you go around the S bend, it’s a very steep climb up the hill the other side. The road was covered in snow and I was a third of the way down it, when a police landrover coming up the hill was flagging me down.

The problem was I didn’t really want to use my brakes but had to and then got into a very nice spin indeed. I had to use the bank to stop so the very nice police man could tell me the road was completely blocked and there was no way through.

“Best reverse back up the hill” he told me, yes fine if you are driving a landrover, but reverse on a hill covered in snow in a transit connect? As I suspected the van was having none of it and so I went over on the wrong side of the road to try and use the tracks he had made to give me a better chance of getting back up that hill.

I did it in the end and took another road for Torrington to get to Bideford; it took a good deal of time to get to Bideford as this road was also untreated and covered in snow.

The worst of the snow was around Tiverton and the A361 had been closed for a good part of the morning due to the snow, but thankfully it had been reopened by the time I needed to use it.

I was surprised the road from Bickleigh to Crediton had not been treated at all and Barton Downs will know how steep and bendy the start of that road is as it climbs to a very high point. Poor van really struggled to make it to the top but did in the end.

One good thing I suppose was the fact the roads were empty everywhere, not that it really helped as I was unable to drive any speed on any of the roads I have been on today. I could not believe all the schools that were closed today, I know it’s their last day, but were things so bad the schools needed to be closed. Once upon a time kids would walk five miles in the snow to get to school, now a few flakes start falling and it’s an extra day off school for them.

If felt very cold walking from my garage some 250 yards from my home to my home at 4pm and I’m sure we are going to have a hard frost tonight. With more snow forecast to fall over night, we might wake up tomorrow morning to a good covering of the stuff.









The Bickleigh to Crediton road at 12pm