What's the worst.......

Driving home from seeing King Lear in Newcastle. Couldn't see the road at all on the dual carriageway in the blizzard. It took us until two in the morning to get home and we never did get up the last hill to our house.

January 1981. Waking up in an hotel in Llandovery and realising that there was a foot of snow on the ground and it was still falling. Rang my head office and told them that I was not going to be doing any work that day, but instead I was going to try to get home to Newport. Had a hearty breakfast in the hotel then set off for Ammanford and the M4. No 4-wheel-drive in those days, just a basic Ford Cortina - standard issue for reps which was my job then.

I reasoned that the motorway would be clear, and as long as I could get to Ammanford then I would be able to get home. Big mistake! Made it as far as Junction 37, then the long climb up Cornelly Pitch finished me off. Slid sideways into a snow-drift - and there I stayed.

I sat in the car for about an hour, getting colder and colder, and quite frankly wondering what to do next when suddenly someone knocked on the passenger window. I wound the window down and there stood an elderly man in a duffel coat who said "It's not getting any clearer - you'd better come and have a cup of tea". His name (I later learned) was Sid, and he and his wife lived close to the motorway. I followed him back to his house, picking up 2 other stranded reps on the way. By early evening it was obvious that the snow was not easing, and we were all stuck there.

This was Friday. It was three days before the snow eased enough for us to get out. The three of us slept on the lounge floor and Sid's wife Vi kept us fed as well as she could. On Monday morning the snow had stopped and we attempted to get out. My car had been vandalised so I had to go home on the train and go back on Tuesday with a low-loader from a local garage to bring the car home.

I have never forgotten the generosity and sheer humanity of that elderly couple. Who, in these suspicious times, would invite three complete strangers into their home just to escape the bad weather?

My employers sent the couple a generous cheque to cover costs - they based it on what it would have cost if I had decided to stay put in the hotel. And I know that the employers of the other two reps sent payment as well.

Sorry tig - no idea - I just remember snow, cold and the garage at the bottom of the hill!

You were luckier, with a pub...

Oh Feetle was it Birdlip hill ? We were going up there in a bus from our college in Gloucester to a 'do' at The Royal Ag Coll at Cirencester when the gear stick came off !. We all trooped down to the pub half way up the hill to wait which was abit of a shock to the other drinkers as we were all going to a pyjama dance and our get-ups were not quite what they were used to !
Sorry - going off subject here !

Driving back to my friends farm from a pub in Cornwall [I know , but it's what we did back then] with zero visibility. Part way back one of us thought to wipe the inside of the windscreen and, hey presto the road appeared in front of us as if by magic. Can't imagine what it's like being on a boat round the Greek Islands; saw the speed and verocity of storms when we stayed on Kefalonia once..it was bad enough being on the beach.

Just outside Melton Mowbray (no exotic locations for me ), driving 3 children to school, sliding sideways down a steep dip in the road on packed snow and watching in horrified fascination as a truck did exactly the same coming the other way. The other driver managed to get his vehicle under control and drive it away from my path.

PS The hill was somewhere in Goucestershire.

One Monday in 1960 (I think) - riding a Vespa from N London to Nottingham - fog, fog and more fog -- arrived at Barton le Clay - sunshine! Rode out the other end of Barton - fog again. Took nine hours! Horrible...

1961 - a gig in South Wales - snow. Returning to London, no heater in the van, we got stuck half-way up a hill. In the morning trudged down to a garage at the foot of the hill, where they thawed out a Land Rover (with a candle!) to come and get us moving again... Also horrible.

In the snow!

Just sitting on the M2, at "my" junction, for six hours, needing a wee, phone battery dying, running out of petrol...oh, the joys of commuting.

Sailing back from Guernsey with a force 4 forecast, turned into a force 8 with mountainous seas. A fishing trawler went down off Berry head and there were just the two of us in a 29ft boat. Very scary.

That has reminded me of being stuck on a fishing boat in a storm between Greece and Corfu. We got swept to Albania and this being over 30 years ago the fishermen were very worried. It had been a beautiful day, we had chartered them to take us to a few beautiful secluded beaches, from Corfu to Greece and the storm came from nowhere and it was getting dark. It was only a small boat. I was very grateful that I had never been someone to suffer from seasickness. I don't know how they did it, but they got us back to the small fishing village and half the village was there with lamps - but the sea was too rough to go to the jetty. We had to jump into the sea and swim back to shore and leave boat and possessions to fend for themselves. Some of the men from the shore swam out to help us in case we weren't strong swimmers. Do you know - I have never written these all out before. Earthquake, hurricane, snowdrifts, storms at sea - I don't have many lives left. The hurricane was the one that scared me most and I think that was because by then I had a child.

The second was in the Philippines. I was on a diving expedition mapping out a potential marine national park around a small, uninhabited island off Negros Occidental. Just at the end of my month's stay, a typhoon came through. Luckily, the eye went well north of us, near Manila, so we weren't in such high winds as that, but even so, tents and typhoons don't mix too well.

Luckily, too, we were very well sheltered on three sides, with a typhoon beach on the fourth. There was also a hut, which gave some additional shelter to some of the tents (but not to mine). I had a very good geodesic mountain tent, designed for high altitude use, and it stood up very well. I got a crack in one of the poles when some oil drums came adrift and crashed into us, and some tents were lost. Also, the two RIBs anchored in the lagoon were capsized and their engines wiped out. My main worry was coconuts. There were some above us and I was afraid of being killed by one coming through the roof of the tent.
The next day, it was time to leave, but far too rough for boats from the mainland to come to the seaward side where we were, so we had to carry all our packs and diving equipment across the island, through lagoons, to the landward side where the boats were waiting.

I enjoy a good bit of weather myself, and mine are probably a bit lame, but two come to mind.

The first was when I was walking in the Himalayas, around 14,000 feet or so. I got up as far as the ice field, but didn't have crampons, and anyway I was travelling alone, so started to make my way back down. A storm came out of nowhere before I got far, as they do in high mountains. It was difficult going, no visibility in the heavy rain, but there was a shepherd's hut at around 13,000 feet, and he said I could spend the night there to weather the storm, and he would go down into the valley below where his house was. Sounded good. The hut was a simple one-storey affair, with a main room and a hole in the roof to let the smoke out, and a small sleeping quarters off it. Just before he went he said that if I heard anything in the night it would just be a leopard which had been taking a few sheep of late.

After he left, I realised that there were no doors, just a blanket hanging over the front entrance and another on the entrance to the sleeping area (which was right next to the main entrance). I spent the night sleeping fitfully with a stout stick next to me. There were noises in the night, but nobody poked their head in, so I went on down in the morning, half awake.

My father driving us home to Hertfordshire across the Fens from his home town of Wisbech where we had spent Christmas. Freezing fog and so much snow we could not see where the road ended and the ditches began. This too was winter of 62/63. We arrived home to snow drifting up our drive and onto the porch - covering our front door and no way to get the car to the garage.

A few years later, in Wales, my uncle died in the middle of an extremely cold winter. No undertakers could get to the house due to the amount of snow. The family were advised to lay the body in bin bags in the garden. Very sad but necessary I am afraid.

The same winter my father was driving to Wales to meet my mother and became trapped in a snow drift. Luckily he had the presence of mind to pull on layers of clothes from his suitcase until a snow plough rescued him.

My earthquake story is the one I didn't realise. We live a couple of hundred yards from the London-Bristol mainline and when we first lived here a couple of goods trains loaded with stone and gravel from the west country used to travel the route at night and when they passed. if we were awake, we could feel the vibration of their weight on the rails and, obviously, hear them.

One night when I was alone I was woken by the sound of the train, which seemed both much louder than usual and really made the house shake. I fell asleep and thought no more about it. When I turned the radio on in the morning it announced that there had been an earthquake in the midlands the previous night and it had been felt and heard as far south as Hampshire. I realised that my 'very noisy, heavy train' had actually been an earthquake

Indeed, very scary experiences.

I forgot the earthquake in Mallorca 45 years ago. It was my birthday in early October, I never did get my day out or even a present. My sister and I were playing in our room because it was hot outside, and the house shook and I fell over, she was on her knees clutching the windowsill, I can still see it. We had no power for a week, walls had fallen down everywhere as had trees. It was also the end of the sun, we had storms and rain for days afterwards. Driving was hard because there were so many rocks on the roads from the hillsides, which made them impassable.

Then of course I was in Kent for the hurricane, which took all the kent pegs off the roof and cracked the wall through just above the upstairs loo. I went up to the top floor to see why it was so draughty in the house and could see stars through the beams, it was surreal. We lost every tree in the garden except one, and spent the night all huddled together in one bed on the side of the house away from the wind. No power for a week and all the roads flooded or impassable because of trees. Along with the rug in the car against the snow, I now always keep several hundred candles in stock. The kids laugh at my candle cupboard but rural Kent ran out of pretty much everything at that time.

Blimey when. Terrifying indeed.

1969 going over the old St Gotthard Pass from Italy into Switzerland late at night. There was a blizzard and snow was dropping like tennis balls - the coach we were in got stuck. The two drivers got out to put chains on the wheels and dig tracks, and the side of the coach slid - we all thought we were going to die. The drivers jumped into the coach to start moving us outside. Down the mountainside was the wreckage of other vehicles that had gone off the mountain. The blizzard was so bad we couldn't see in front of us, then a Landrover appeared with more vehicles to guide us off the Pass down into Switzerland. We were taken to a hotel and given makeshift beds and thick duvets. I slept in a room behind the kitchen which had icicles on the inside of the windows, but I slept like a log after that terrifying experience.

Hurricane Bob, 1991 Maine. What a storm! We were staying with family in a half built house where the only means of water was from a well, electrically pumped.(No back-up generator at that time) So when the electricity went.........no water, which was worse than having no heat or light. I had a sickness bug, as well as one son, and the other was quite poorly with a nasty reaction to poison ivy.
After the storm, many, many trees (well, it was Maine) remained unsafe, and the advice from the locals was that when out walking, look up, because you'll see a tree falling before you hear it. Very disconcerting.

My memory is from winter 1962/3 too.
Our first boy was born in Oct 1962 and we drove down to inlaws in Essex for xmas, living near Manchester at the time.
On the way back the freezing fog was so bad we drove all the way with me hanging out of the window to see the edge of the road. Took about 10 hours, with a 3 month old baby.
Then when we got back all the pipes in our house were frozen - oh no! We spent the next few days staying with friends.

1962/63. My father was stationed in Germany and I was at university. We got the big freeze at the same time as Britain, but colder and there was a German law that occupiers had to clear the pavements fronting their homes - and my mother had been so delighted with the bigger garden that came with the married quarter on the corner of the road.

Youngest sister and I had to get out every morning and clear the frozen snow hammering it with spades and a garden fork to break it up. It was so cold that we had to have scarves wrapped round our face, to breathe the air directly sent a shaft of cold into your lungs that felt like a knife. In the end it was too cold and we let the path freeze up. Younger sister was in hospital and on one journey there we met a man skating down the road we were driving down

AT the end of the Christmas vacation I returned to Newcastle, where I was at university. It was under 6 foot of snow in places, and all I could say ecstatically was 'isn't lovely and warm here'. Everybody thought I was mad, but it was warm compared with Germany.

Bathroom froze in Sheffield 1978-9. We put a night light under the loo cistern and that kept that from refreezing but we had to get washed in the kitchen for a week or so.

Kitchen sink drain froze in Edinburgh early eighties (overnight temp -17°C). Taps still worked but had to pour washing up water down the loo.

Several winters here we've needed crampons to walk down the hill because of ice, but we don't mind that.

My first winter in Dundee I had chapped knees walking to and from uni! Didn't have over-trousers then, nor a long enough coat.

Smelly, yellow freezing fog in Oldham in the 70s. Temperature inversion was keeping the freezing air at the bottom of the valleys. Went on for about 3 days getting more and more polluted and sulphurous. The council put oil lamps on the corners of junctions so you could see where the edge of the road was.
Gave me an insight into what pea soup -ers must have been like.

No, tiggypiro, that was rich Ex rather than poor current schoolteacher!

merlotgran and others - yes, we used to live in Lincolnshire and the fogs are very scary. Every year someone would end up in the ditches because of fog or ice, in our area alone there would be one or two deaths a year between Horncastle and Boston from people not being able to escape from their cars, the ditches are wider and deeper than they look from the road. One woman lost four children about ten years ago, two were hers, one night. That was awful, with all the blame-throwing.