Fabulous article on the BBC:

Visitors to the Snowdonia National Park are being urged to use "common sense" when parking their vehicles.

The warning came after motorists parked on the side of the road at Pen y Pass near Llanberis because the car park was inaccessible due to snow and ice.

Photographs show buses struggling to pass the parked cars.

A spokesman for the park said it was not policy to clear car parks when more snow was forecast and said drivers should park lower down the mountain.

"Because Pen y Pass is so high, when the weather forecast is like it is now, then there is no point in using resources to clear a car park with 81 spaces," said Peter Trumper, the head of property services in the park.

"There is a good chance that we would get a digger up there to clear it, but then when people got back down they could find snow half-way up their car doors," he added.

Mr Tumper said the advice would be to drivers to use car parks lower down the mountain and walk from there.

"Usually the snow does not stay for long, but that is different this year," he said.

"The public should take responsibility for themselves and not drive up to Pen y Pass (if conditions are bad) - and they should check our website for MountainSafe advice before starting out," he added.

Mr Trumper said park staff had been advised to turn back on Tuesday because the snow and ice made it extremely dangerous to reach Pen y Pass.

= please park 3 miles down the valley and walk up, then you'll have an extra 6 miles to add to your day!

Of course, if you do get to the top of Snowdon after your somewhat-longer-than-expected walk and require shelter from the elements, you'll find the nice new cafe (the one that only opened in mid-June this year) is shut for the winter... ::)

I thought it was 'Park and ride' from the lower carparks. Why walk when you can go on the bus :lol: :lol:

---

Just for the record, I've just got back from an evening drive up and over the Llanberis Pass and I can report that the car park has, oooooh, perhaps 2" or even 3" of snow in it.

Quite what Mr.Trumpet was going on about ("snow halfway up the car doors), I have no idea... 😉

---

I thought it was 'Park and ride' from the lower carparks. Why walk when you can go on the bus :lol: :lol:

That assumes that the bus is running, which it often isn't - especially on Sundays!

Here we are: 2" of snow on the Llanberis Pass -

🔗Personal-Album-2-Image-45858[linkphoto]Personal-Album-2-Image-45858[/linkphoto][/link]

---

I hope when you stopped to take that photograph you didn't cause any problems for buses wanting to pass you! 😉 😉 😉

Passed a snow plough though. No idea what it was doing though, seeing as it wasn't gritting and wasn't actually moving any snow around...

---

Hmmmmm looked at the reading for the 2 units as i finished work today 504 and 506 MW.thats about 5 to 10 higher than normal.
just coincidence with the stories about gas supplies i guess :confused:

---

Guys guys.... quick.... omigord..... look at that

ITS SNOWING... 😮 😮 😮

You mean you'd not noticed.... well!!! ::)

---

Yes, funny that, you would never expect that to happen in January would you? :lol:

Hampshire certainly doesn't - it's in chaos!! I live about four miles away from the coast (sandwiched between the M27 and the A27) thus snow down here is very unusual, and soon melts if it settles, however, we have had about a six to eight inch fall of snow overnight in my area, probably heavier on the Downs, it's still snowing heavily and the whole county has apparently ground to a halt. Being used to Peak District snow falls (those were the days when my Fiat Panda 4x4 {I have had Land Rover lwb diesel Safari's Series 2 as well} danced over the top of snowdrifts passing Land Rovers embedded in drifts - however, it didn't like wet snow drifts when the thaw set in, one evening youngest son and myself went drift hopping on Bonsall Moor, sadly it belly flopped into a very wet snowdrift and we had to spend the night on the Moor as we had no spade, grit or old sacking with us, these were the days before mobile phones and no-one at home missed us, which said a lot!) having had a snow warning in advance and knowing what happens to roads in Hampshire when it snows, my daughter and me had prepared and had bought in basic essentials before hand so there's no need to go out. Now I'm getting old I'm glad that I only have to look out the window at it. Being rather long in the tooth I also remember the very bad winters of 1940/41, 1946/47, 1962/63 and 1978/79 (there were fourteen foot snowdrifts at Bonsall then which completely covered the front of the cottage I last lived in when in Bonsall, it was completely covered from the roof to the ground) so there could be weeks of it to come yet!

Happy adventures in the Land Rovers, I enjoy seeing the photographs, brings back happy memories.

Pleasant snowballing to everyone!

No snow in Cambridge yet 😞

I can remember the 1960s and later winters. I lost my car for a fortnight (Singer Gazelle) in a 15 foot drift. 😞

The recovery operation was interesting as the NCB had cleared the valley roads and the lanes to the first outlying farms, from there the farmers had joined up through the fields

Think Singer Gazelle, snow, sloping fields, baling twine tow rope and farmers who had long since run out of fags.

Very glad I had a packet of Capstan Full. :lol:

sougher:
I vaguely remember the 47/48 event but the 62/63 winter will be forever in my memory.
I was working on the Salisbury Plain at the time (might as well have been the South Pole) with 15ft snow drifts and temps around -15C.
The Met. Office in their wisdom had two wooden huts and an old army GL radar. In one of the huts and the radar the heating had gone on the blink. The hut, for reasons that never came to light was the one building on a huge army camp that was the responsibilty of the R.A.F. at Boscombe Down. They of course denied all knowledge. Ergo the argument on who should repair the heating remained unresolved throughout all of the big freeze.
So consequently at six in the morning you spent 90 minutes in the radar that could have been a large fridge and then retired to the unheated hut to attempt to sort out the data. Oh happy days!
To cap it all the other hut was heated by an old coke stove. Extra heating like electric fires were used to keep the historical Dines Anemometer warm. 😉

I did a little research some time ago on the great blizzard of 1891 that was probably the worst blizzard of the 19th century in Cornwall and Devon. Many lives were lost, mostly at sea. But that's another story.

---

My Mum had a Singer Gazelle when I was little!

Just started snowing in Cambridge.

Carnkie - funny you mention the Great Blizzard of 1891, my dad was born on the 28th February, 1891 in Derby and always told us that the snow ploughs were out at the time (the mind boggles at trying to visulise what an 1891 snow plough looked like!) and it always ended up with his sisters (who were younger and therefore, not born) arguing with him that there was no snow on his birthday.

Co-incidently I attended a Derbyshire Family History Society's talk in Derby probably in the 1980's when living back in the county, it was about the canals and canal people. This is when I came across the Great Blizzard of 1891 again, as many canal boats were frozen into the ice and couldn't move, consequently a lot of canal people froze to death on the canals because they were cut off in isolated areas of England and could get no food for themselves or their horses. This event is very little known or remembered today.

Carnkie - funny you mention the Great Blizzard of 1891, my dad was born on the 28th February, 1891 in Derby and always told us that the snow ploughs were out at the time (the mind boggles at trying to visulise what an 1891 snow plough looked like!)

Hopefully it was powered by a Sentinel Steam Waggon. 😉

Edit: Not produced 'till 1906, perhaps even better a traction engine! 😮

Perhaps he was remembering snow ploughs on the railways, which were far more important than the roads at that time?

A bit more snow now :thumbup:

This seems like an opportune moment to post up again one of my favourite Youtube films, for anyone who didn't catch it last time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl4pJwcE7JI 

Yes its a fabulous film... I had a spell in Scotland and remember ploughs at work... the worst bit was apparently clearing points and de-icing signal wires....

Bet many of the locations seen there are vastly different or completely gone... 😞

---

Apart from the stations like Tyndrum, does anyone recognise any of the locations? I saw a bit of third rail but it could have been anywhere on the Southern.