Post by Dave on Feb 2, 2019 18:23:56 GMT
Snow 1st & 2nd February 2019
On Friday the 1st February 2019 I left home for work in the dark as normal this time of the year, while it was very cold, there was not a snow flake to be seen. It was the same story on Saturday here in Torbay.
It was a different story when I got to Newton Abbot where all the company vans had a good covering of snow on them as well as everything else. I felt very confident that I would be able to get my round down and on Friday and the only place I had any real problems was on the way to and from Manaton.
I got in and out of Lustleigh with ease and much later on even Doddiscombsleigh was reachable with care. While the snow made my working day that much harder, it gave me the opportunity to do what I love doing the most and that is take some photos.
Saturday should have been a much easier day to get around and would have been if I did not have to do a call I did not do on Friday in North Bovey. I had decided the best way to North Bovey would be to go the Moretonhampstead way and not on the road from Manaton to North Bovey which I knew might well be impassable.
I got to Moretonhampstead with ease and then took the road to North Bovey which was fine to start with, but the further I went the worse the road became. It had not bee treated in anyway and being a single track road, it would have been impossible to go back.
So I carried on driving with all the care I could muster and made it into the village and got the call done. I knew getting back to Moretonhampstead was going to prove to be more difficult and if one or two other drivers had a bit more sense about them, I might not have had the problems I did.
I started going up one hill and needed to keep moving, but one driver would not wait up the top of the hill and dove down the single track road towards me. I was forced to stop and was unable to get going again,
For one hour no one could get in or out of the village and I was powerless to do anything about it. One drive behind me at a winch on the front of his land Rover, but he failed to pull the back end of the van out of the hedgerow.
Much later on a young man in a 4x4 came down the hill and offered to try and help. We tied the front on my van to the front of his 4x4 and putting his 4x4 into reverse, inch by inch he pulled me up the hill.
I then had a few very steep hills to go down that were packed with frozen snow and I was still a fair way away from Moretonhampstead. I was feeling rather sore after falling over a few times when we were fastening a rope between the two vehicles, but my thoughts were only on getting back in one piece to Moretonhampstead.
I do not think I have ever been so pleased to see Moretonhampstead in my life, but now I just needed to try and make up for so much lost time. When I got home I read that Dartmoor had major problems with cars being abandoned due to the conditions on the moors and people going there when they were tols not too.
If I did not have had to try and make a delivery for my company, there is no way I would want to be out driving on the moors, it is just too dangerous and not worth risking your life over.
