Snow Day Part Deux - The Sticky One

Finally here it is, the exceptional snow we had on Tuesday 2nd February 2021. After the debacle of taking 3 hours to do 8 miles two weeks earlier - and having to ditch the car and walk the last half mile - this volume of snow was predicted so I set off before 7am to try avoid cars getting stuck and blocking the roads.

On the whole the tactic worked, I made work in a reasonable hour to do 5 miles - 20 minutes of which was spent at temporary lights for road works that were perfectly placed to stop oncoming traffic on a upward slope - consequently meaning more often then not the cars coming towards us got stuck on the slope preventing us passing through the single lane.

You will see plenty of Winter Wonderland snow covered trees during this trip, it might not look very much snow on the road - but in the UK even the slightest dusting causes chaos because we just don't expect. In fact for the last two winters we had nothing, and last winter I only had to defrost the windscreen once - where as this winter it's been a weekly requirement since December.

On the whole reasonably priced French SUV handled the slippy conditions well, it does however have one failure - you can not turn off the traction control. This is a major fail in snow, if you stop on a snowy hill getting started is near impossible, as soon as a wheel slips the traction control takes over - accelerator to the floor you get no revs as the computer controls the power - brake, little power, brake, little power - your lucky to move at all. 20 Minutes in you see a petrol station on the right, at this point the traction control kicks in as the wheels start slipping and I start a horrible slow down to be eventually a stop - if I had let it. Without a button to turn off the traction control, the only way to get round it is drop the clutch so you coast, then re-engage which gives a burst of movement until the traction control grabs it again. Repeating this multiple times kept me moving until a bit more grip was found.

29 minutes in while trying to find the flattest route to work - which is pretty high up - I brave the mild slope road past Wynsors shoe shop where I drop the InPost parcels - it is totally snow covered and I'm impressed I made it.

Having reached work, with snow piled high in front of the warehouse shutter and my car looking like an abominable snow man - I decided to park opposite in the church car park. I say park - I got in just from momentum but once in I was quickly stuck - had to dig some tracks so I could park more gracefully.