Or how I survived the winter of 2007.

By Michael McNeil...

It started snowing the fine flakes that were alleged to stick in the
days when the UK used to have snow south of Scotland almost every
winter. So naturally my mate and I went off at about 6:30 am to work
at Craven Arms.

The day before, the van got into a skid just on the border of
Shropshire a few miles out of Stoke. So rather than wait for first
light my mate called on time and I find it has started snowing.
Me: "What the hell are we doing, going to work in this?"
Him: "Gerrin it's just started."
As all good adventures do.

So we headed into the colder reaches of deepest England in the worst
blizzard for decades.

It snowed the same fine silt almost all the way down. 60 miles of it -
or just under half an inch if you reckon generously.

Now this barn conversion is in the hills some mile or so up a country
lane and I kid you not, there must have been well over half an inch of
snow on it when we got there. I don't know how we survived. (Most of
the week since the last lunar phase, the ground had been solid except
for the parts that were still liquid.)

Anyway, as you can imagine, we were loath to stay the full eight
hours, even though the forecast was for warmer weather and a stop to
any more precipitation. We had to act quickly!

So my mate phoned his girlfriend and asked if it was still snowing
there. And it was. So we went home.

All the way home we could see signs of winter's depredations, even
among the fairly long grass if you looked closely. But we got back
before it all melted and thus I lived to tell the tale.