ambient chilled motorway driving

What with this being a Bank Holiday weekend, I'm now pleased to be sightseeing ahead of many of the motorists who will be hitting the road.

It wasn't all plain sailing though. There was a vehicle fire on the motorway which held me up for a long time.

I was one of the motorists not breaking the law during the incident. There were hundreds more who decided that they had important places to visit and so they would use the emergency lane on the motorway instead of staying in line like the rest of us.

It started with just a couple of foreign-plated vehicles (Romania and France), and then in minutes had turned into a complete flow. As a side note, I notice that some foreign plated articulated lorries also seem to be using the outside lane on 3 and 4 lane motorways, which is prohibited for those that read the highway code.

The emergency lane is really for emergencies, such as breakdowns, or in the case of a fire on the motorway it is so that service vehicles can get through quickly.

This was a case in point, where the extra lane just became a traffic jam of law-breakers and effectively blocked the access to the emergency site from the fire, police and ambulance services.

In the picture you can see an incident vehicle to my left trying to get past a row of cars which have all decided to use the emergency lane. It took them about 10 minutes to pass just three or four cars to my left and at one point they had to get out of the vehicle to direct traffic back onto the legal part of the motorway.

a kind of liberation

It took me half an hour to liberate my car today. The frozen snow was about 20 cm all over it. I ran the engine, whacked the heater onto maximum and started scraping.

Then I dug out the wheels. A diagnostic message said something about take the car to the workshop to have the brakes checked. I suppose the ice has got inside the sensors.

Then I reversed it onto the road I'd dug yesterday. Slightly down hill, enough for the little yellow triangle stability signal to flash intermittently. Gingerly down the slope to the next level of road, which had become noticeably more slippery than yesterday. I needed to drive about another 300 metres to get to a bigger gritted and salted road.

I hadn't bargained on the sheer number of walkers who were splayed around the whole expanse ahead of me. More than when I'd been out yesterday or Wednesday. I suspect cabin fever had finally forced people to the streets. So instead of making my progress at a sedate 2-3 mph, I had to stop.

I knew this would be a bad thing.

The car got stuck. Luckily I'd brought a shovel so I could dig out the snow that had immediately formed around the front of the rear wheels. I moved the build up of ice and then three neighbours gave me a lengthy shove to get moving again.

End of the road. Glass surface but no traffic at the T junction so I could turn without stopping into the main road where I found proper grip. I've decided to leave the car on a main road now. The backpack, woolly hat, gloves and ski jacket came in useful for my walk back home.

As I passed the spot where I'd got stuck, I noticed another car parked there. It's wheels had sunk to around the level of the axles.

Here's Tori Amos fabulously singing about Winter. And fathers. And daughters.
Snow can wait, I forgot my mittens, Wipe my nose, get my new boots on.

snow go slow blow (Yo Ho Ho)

The last time I drove to France (earlier this year), there was an Operation Stack in effect on the M20. It is where they close the motorway and convert it into a lorry park.

Well, guess what? I have tickets to travel again this weekend, using the Tunnel to avoid the problems of the Ferries at this time of year.

Except.

Port of Calais is closed.

The M20 motorway to Folkestone is closed

Four or five trains were inserted into the French end of the tunnel in some form of destruction testing spree. "Hmm, one won't work, let's try another, and another."

Thankfully everyone has been rescued, but I wasn't expecting the journey to be such an adventure.

I may need a different Chris Rea track this year.