Snow in Basingstoke
It is not often that you get to see Basingstoke on the news. It is even rarer for it to be the lead item. Well, that’s what’s happened today.
Five emergency rest centres were set up for people who could not get home! One person left Reading at 3pm and was still not home in Basingstoke 8 hours later.
Looking out the windows in Reading yesterday, I could tell that it was going to be very bad. There were lots and lots of cars skidding every where. Then I found out that people were taking 40 minutes to leave a car park in Basingstoke and so I guessed it would be gridlocked. So I went to Primark in Reading bought a pair of tracksuit trousers and a hoody. On the way back I helped push a silver BMW back the right way. It had skidded so that it was facing across the road.
I then went to someone’s retirement drinks, got my suit off and my Primark stuff on, got the train to Basingstoke (it was on time!) and then ran home. It took me 40 minutes to get home which is only two or three minutes slower than normal. I ran up the main road past queues on non-moving traffic. Absolutely fine! Much of the time I was running on very compact snow, sometimes compact ice and the last 2k was on proper snow on top of a gravel track. This was the hardest to run on. By the time I got to the top of the hill, there was about 15 cm of fresh snow.
Then I borrowed my wife’s bike (it’s got a battery) and took an over night bag for someone who had got stuck with friends a couple of miles away. Then turned round, and went back the way I had run. I had to be a bit more careful going up hill, past the queue of cars as sometimes the cars span their wheels so fast that they went sideways quite quickly. Then I carried on up to the top of the hill (passing all the cars and busses I had past when I ran by before). At the very top is a small roundabout and there was a furniture lorry stuck there. So I got off, helped push it, and then rode home.
This morning I will ride to the station. It looks like the trains are still working (but they will not be to time) and see whether I can ride home or not.