28 February (Part 1) - Not quite a metre deep or minus twenty!
I met
my Romanian friend Constantine
this morning and I don’t think I have seen a man so excited about an inch and a half of snow covering our road and
the slopes of Lesnes Abbey. He was heading in that direction with his brother armed with skis and a sledge.
He said that the temperature was minus 20º back in his home town with a metre of
snow. As he climbed the hill he called back that he was hoping for more snow tonight. Well there has to be one!
I have given up on walking to the shops when it is raining because the puddles along a poorly surfaced Abbey
Road (B213) ensure a good drenching. This morning I decided to extend that rule to
snow, in part to see what the roads were like as I was wondering whether it
was reasonable to expect a visitor due later to make the journey.
At half past seven I was surprised to see that Abbey Road (which runs alongside Lesnes Abbey) was totally snow covered with no sign of any
clearance operation having taken place. With a scheduled 20 buses an hour I had expected to see a reasonably clear road,
but where were the buses?
Twitter provided the answer, despite the repeated gritting promised by Bexley Council, in the centre of town buses
were not managing to get out of Bexleyheath garage, or maybe the drivers were not able to get there.
Despite the snow covered roads they did not present an especially difficult
driving challenge. Go steadily in a high gear at no more than
20 m.p.h.
The main danger is as always the clueless and the boy racers impatiently revving engines and spinning wheels.
I saw one almost lose it at the right angle bend shown above.
Fortunately the sun and increased traffic levels came to the rescue and main
roads were clear by mid-day.
Bexley Council says that the grit and salt needs to be ground in by traffic to be
effective but if the bus garage is not well gritted much of their effort will be thwarted. Seems obvious so who slipped up?