Listening to all the media prattle about how to do Christmas this year (now rendered meaningless thanks to Johnson the Incompetent) I was reminded of one of our attempts to travel the length of the country to meet up with family which was pretty fraught even without a pandemic to contend with. Our usual Christmas routine at this time was to visit my mother-in-law in Bristol for a long weekend in mid-December to do some Christmas shopping and to meet up with my family, who travelled up from Devon for a meal and present exchange before we all headed home for Christmas itself.
This post is adapted from an old Facebook Note (remember them?) I wrote 10 years ago. It was, if you remember, the year where we got unusually heavy snowfall in December.
Friday: Due to an adverse weather forecast, we completely changed our plans for the pre-Christmas trip to Bristol, travelling Friday straight after school (last day of term) rather than the more civilised Saturday morning. This turned out to be a good decision, as the journey only took 4 hours, including rush hour through Birmingham (this was before the era of the smart motorway).
This post is adapted from an old Facebook Note (remember them?) I wrote 10 years ago. It was, if you remember, the year where we got unusually heavy snowfall in December.
Friday: Due to an adverse weather forecast, we completely changed our plans for the pre-Christmas trip to Bristol, travelling Friday straight after school (last day of term) rather than the more civilised Saturday morning. This turned out to be a good decision, as the journey only took 4 hours, including rush hour through Birmingham (this was before the era of the smart motorway).
Saturday: We woke up to about 1" snow. My mother in law's house (as with a lot of places in Bristol) was at the top of steep hill, so this was not encouraging.
Also, Kid#1 was now unwell so I had to stay at home with the children instead of all of us heading out into Bristol to shop. With no internet and only basic TV channels, it was lucky we packed the Wii! The weather wasn’t too bad in Bristol, but if anyone remembers that huge weather system which dumped snow over south east England, closing airports, etc? We saw it moving west to east across the country from the comfort of my mother-in-law's living room...
(That's the moon showing above the clouds)
Monday: Kids still poorly. Got up early to take mother-in-law for a planned blood test. While in Bedminster (at the bottom of the hill from her house), more snow came on very rapidly and so we struggled through semi-stationary traffic all the way home on untreated roads. 45 mins to do the 10-minute drive home.
While this was going on, my sister was trying to arrange to meet up for the present-swap, and eventually opted to drive to mother-in-law’s house (getting lost and stuck on black ice in the process). With the weather worsening all the time, she had to make a decision whether to head back to Devon or stay in Bristol with us (which would have meant seven of us in a small house usually occupied by one, with no additional food in the house). She decided to risk the trip home and got lucky with roads.
The state of the roads precluded me getting into the city to shop for presents for Other Half, but even if this wasn't the case, the fuel leak I'd discovered on the car meant a call to AA (we were warned it could take up to 24 hrs for them to come) so I was stuck in house anyway, waiting for them. Hasty revision of plans to take mother-in-law to BRI for her op on Tuesday morning (which might be cancelled anyway, due to weather). In fact, the AA came within 90 mins of logging the call and a very, very nice man fixed the problem, but by then Other Half had gone into town on the bus and the kids were still not up to travelling. OH did his hunter-gatherer bit by buying M&S food for tea, and at least we had hospital transport again.
Tuesday: Mother-in -law delivered to hospital and I went back to the house to pack the car, which involved carrying all luggage down 20 snow-covered steps from the house. MIL’s op fine, but our reserve plan to stay overnight to make sure she was fully OK scuppered by a weather forecast for heavy snow through Midlands on Wednesday.
An indication of health of the kids - neither of them showed any desire to play in the snow all weekend.
The journey home was fine, as there was little traffic on the road, but a drop in temperature froze the windscreen washer, so I was unable to clear screen properly. At one point the screen was nothing but an emulsion of salt and oil, making it virtually opaque (pretty scary), a bit like covering your windscreen with vinaigrette! Thank goodness for congestion at M5/M6 interchange (not often you can say that!) which enabled me to spray de-icer on the screen as a temporary measure until we could stop at Hilton Park.
Once home, all I had to do was all the planned Christmas food shopping and an attempt at last-minute present buying with two poorly/bored kids in tow! Still at least I wasn't stuck at Heathrow bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t get to Bali!
As ever, though, Christmas (just the four of us) came and went as normal, regardless of preparation or panic, and we’ll be doing much the same this year except for meeting up with family – Manchester and Bristol are both Tier 3 and my sister’s bit of Devon is Tier 2. That way, hopefully, we’ll all still be around to meet up next year.
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