Well I'm back! What horrible drives we had.
Saturday morning I was on the phone to my SIL who lives in Cardiff, comparing notes about the weather, when I looked out of the window and realised it had started to snow here (SW London). DS2 and I threw everything into bags as quickly as we could, packed the car up including sleeping bags and a shovel, jackets and snowboots, and went to the local garage to fill up with petrol and buy some sandwiches, drinks and chocolates. By the time we got to the A3, 5 minutes later, it was atrocious and the M25 was even worse. Everyone was skidding and sliding around and it didn't look like the road had been gritted/salted at all. Or it had snowed so quickly that it had all be covered up.
Finally managed to get to the M4 turn-off, but that was just as bad. We stopped at the first service station along the M4, at Reading - it had taken us 2 hours just to reach this point.
Thankfully after that, as we headed westwards, it was much better - the roads were clearer, more obviously gritted and there was less traffic which was helpful. But it still took us 6 hours altogether to get to Cardiff!
Today, leaving this morning, it was exactly the same - looked out of the window and realised it had started snowing, so we piled into the car as soon as we could. The first problem was just getting out of the drive! DH had to dig us out. Then we had difficulty negotiating the local roads, as they hadn't been gritted. I couldn't make it up a nearby hill, although I had 5 or 6 attempts, so we had to find another route to the motorway. Thankfully SIL doesn't live too far away from the main road to the M4, so we were soon on our way. The road itself wasn't too bad, although as the temperature was -6, there were speed limits in place. But the real problem was that my washer bottle had frozen and so we had to keep stopping so that I could wash the windscreen. So much salt/dirt was coming off the road that I couldn't keep it clean - and it wasn't snowing at that stage to help me out either.
So finally home before the next dump of snow hits London this afternoon.
And I'm supposed to be driving to my family in Leeds after Christmas, so I'm really hoping that the snow has properly gone by then! What do you reckon to the long term forcast, OHBBK?