An 'interesting' day

Back at base camp at last. 161 miles the 'Long Way Round' in 9 1/2
hours.

The plus side, powder snow like we have never known before at Mont
Dore. The down side, several hours on the A89 autoroute going nowhere.
Summit of a big hill between Clermont Ferrand and Brive. HGVs given up
the unequal struggle and kipped down for the night. People in camper
vans cooking dinner.

Thank **** I had snow chains with me. I wouldn't have even got out of
the car park at the base of the ski runs without them.

Had to take them off then put them back on stopoped on the autoroute.
Then off again when the snow ploughs had finally been able to clear
and grit.

I really thought we wdere going to end up spending the night in the
car at one poiint when we hadn't moved more than 500 metres in 2
hours.

[1] On the autoroute across to Brive then up to Limoges rather than
tryinng to tackle the plateau de Millevache. If I could have been sure
of having the road to myslef I might have tried it, but it is pretty
high, lonely and liable to drifts.

The last 20 or so kilomtres climbing back up to 600 metres on a D road
were challenging. But chains weren't needed with nothing in the way/.
Just delicate throttle in thrid using the diesel grunt sans turbo and
plenty of flickering from the traction loss light.

 

It would appear so. We would have been OK even if we had to sleep in
the car. Plenty of warm ski clothing, a little hard tack to chew on,
water, and by presence of mind more than half a tank of diesel, so we
would have been warm enough, if a little peckish by the morning.

Not overly impressed by the organisation of the rescue services. Still
I doubt it would have been handled better in the UK during the great
Xmas close down.

Could have done with a bit of information as to what was happening.
The other side of the autoroute was also closed fairly quickly, so not
even passing motorists to tell us anything.

At least , when we reached the toll barrier at the A89/A20 junction it
was open. So a bit of monetary compensation.

I guess they were caught out by a combination of an inaccurate weather
forecast and loads of traffic arising from cunts leaving the slopes
early because of the white out conditions ;-)

At least most of the ski brigade had snow chains. I was going to
conduct a survey for Ace of snow tyre fitment, but decided to give it
a miss.

PF

 

:

Michel Poisson?

 

The French news agencies say that the authorities were not expecting
the snow until this morning, so not quite the same, more a question of
timing, as it so often is.