D
Deleted member 65149
Guest
Drove the 180 mile return trip from Peterborough to Heathrow yesterday afternoon to send outlaws and niece back to Mongolia (that has far more snow). Worth the journey to put an end to nearly 5 months of headaches, but it was bloomin hard work. All the luggage and a full back seat kept the rear wheels turning well on the way down, but on the way back home it felt like I was driving on ice most of the way - and probably was!
My biggest complaints of course were other drivers. Those not worried about bending a £45k car, or in 4x4s, or on winter tyres (I'm thinking harder about getting them), were able to go faster than my 50 - 60 mph reasonably comfortable on the inside lane speed. But why oh why did they all feel it necessary to wait until they were just inches from my a*** to pull out into the next lane? And worse still, why the *&%$ did they have to almost slice the front grill off my car as they pulled back in? All the sh*t thrown onto my widscreen left me blind for what felt like a long time, so I just had to hope they didn't slow down.
I decided to go down the M1, expecting it to be clearer and easier than the last section of the A1. The road itself wasn't bad, but the driving was abysmal. My totally inappropriate car felt comfortable at 60 - 70, and many cars were able to go a fair amount faster. But the majority of people were driving at 40 to 50 - in all four lanes! Actually that's not quite true, lane 1 was deserted and lane 2 only had about one car per mile. So I sat in lane 1 all the way down to the M25!
The M25 wasn't too bad and we soon arrived at T4 Heathrow to find a long queue for the car park so drove straight round to the drop-off point to disgorge SWMBO and our three departing visitors. Then slowly looped around to join the long queue for the car park, and when I eventually got in I opted for the first space I could find instead of my usual "keep door dents to a minimum" ploy of parking well away from anyone else. I slowly wandered around to the check-in expecting all the excess baggage charges and the like to have been dealt with, but no sign of them. MOSWMBO decided she wanted another padlock for one of her cases so they'd all gone shopping
After seeing off the marauding horde and paying the mortgage-sized car-park fee we set of home. Once again the M25 was easy with relatively little snow to be seen. Because of the plonkers we'd encountered coming down on the M1 I decided to take the slightly shorter A1. The A414 from the M25 to the A1 had a good dusting of snow but not much traffic. The problem was I got lulled into a false sense of security and upon leaving a roundabout I was a tad less than uber-sensitive with my right foot, encouraging the back end to perform a move that would have had me awarded 10 points on Dancing on Ice. Other than the brown stain that I'll have to remove from both front seats, nothing untoward happened. But I drove the rest of the journey quite a bit slower!
Further up the A1, the very nice lady who lives in the dashboard told me that there was a long queue of traffic after the Black Cat roundabout, travelling at an average of 25mph. She reminded us again as we got nearer, but when we got there the road was virtually empty! Instead we were able to enjoy the sight of the falling snow illuminated by our powerful headlights.
We eventually arrived home safely, only to find that one of our neighbours had parked almost opposite our drive on the narrow snow-covered road on which we live. We only have a slight gradient up onto our driveway, but I wasn't able to get enough of a run at it to negotiate it completely. ESP, ASR and everything else said "too slippery, I'm not going to turn the wheels" so I had to have a few attemps using no more than the limited width of the road to get in. Then I had the fun of putting the car in the garage. Once again the back end twitched like a bee's bum when telling its mates about a source of nectar as I edged gingerly towards the suddenly even narrower appearing garage entrance. Having taken the extra precaution of folding in the mirrors (every cm helps - well, so I've been told anyway) I finally breathed a massive sigh of relief to have come through the journey without a single scrape.
Before putting the car away, I saw that the front end was covered in ice, completely obliterating the number plate. So I could have gone speeding past cameras without a worry. Except I got nowhere near speed limits anywhere!
My biggest complaints of course were other drivers. Those not worried about bending a £45k car, or in 4x4s, or on winter tyres (I'm thinking harder about getting them), were able to go faster than my 50 - 60 mph reasonably comfortable on the inside lane speed. But why oh why did they all feel it necessary to wait until they were just inches from my a*** to pull out into the next lane? And worse still, why the *&%$ did they have to almost slice the front grill off my car as they pulled back in? All the sh*t thrown onto my widscreen left me blind for what felt like a long time, so I just had to hope they didn't slow down.
I decided to go down the M1, expecting it to be clearer and easier than the last section of the A1. The road itself wasn't bad, but the driving was abysmal. My totally inappropriate car felt comfortable at 60 - 70, and many cars were able to go a fair amount faster. But the majority of people were driving at 40 to 50 - in all four lanes! Actually that's not quite true, lane 1 was deserted and lane 2 only had about one car per mile. So I sat in lane 1 all the way down to the M25!
The M25 wasn't too bad and we soon arrived at T4 Heathrow to find a long queue for the car park so drove straight round to the drop-off point to disgorge SWMBO and our three departing visitors. Then slowly looped around to join the long queue for the car park, and when I eventually got in I opted for the first space I could find instead of my usual "keep door dents to a minimum" ploy of parking well away from anyone else. I slowly wandered around to the check-in expecting all the excess baggage charges and the like to have been dealt with, but no sign of them. MOSWMBO decided she wanted another padlock for one of her cases so they'd all gone shopping
After seeing off the marauding horde and paying the mortgage-sized car-park fee we set of home. Once again the M25 was easy with relatively little snow to be seen. Because of the plonkers we'd encountered coming down on the M1 I decided to take the slightly shorter A1. The A414 from the M25 to the A1 had a good dusting of snow but not much traffic. The problem was I got lulled into a false sense of security and upon leaving a roundabout I was a tad less than uber-sensitive with my right foot, encouraging the back end to perform a move that would have had me awarded 10 points on Dancing on Ice. Other than the brown stain that I'll have to remove from both front seats, nothing untoward happened. But I drove the rest of the journey quite a bit slower!
Further up the A1, the very nice lady who lives in the dashboard told me that there was a long queue of traffic after the Black Cat roundabout, travelling at an average of 25mph. She reminded us again as we got nearer, but when we got there the road was virtually empty! Instead we were able to enjoy the sight of the falling snow illuminated by our powerful headlights.
We eventually arrived home safely, only to find that one of our neighbours had parked almost opposite our drive on the narrow snow-covered road on which we live. We only have a slight gradient up onto our driveway, but I wasn't able to get enough of a run at it to negotiate it completely. ESP, ASR and everything else said "too slippery, I'm not going to turn the wheels" so I had to have a few attemps using no more than the limited width of the road to get in. Then I had the fun of putting the car in the garage. Once again the back end twitched like a bee's bum when telling its mates about a source of nectar as I edged gingerly towards the suddenly even narrower appearing garage entrance. Having taken the extra precaution of folding in the mirrors (every cm helps - well, so I've been told anyway) I finally breathed a massive sigh of relief to have come through the journey without a single scrape.
Before putting the car away, I saw that the front end was covered in ice, completely obliterating the number plate. So I could have gone speeding past cameras without a worry. Except I got nowhere near speed limits anywhere!
