Driving on thin ice?

I’ve made it home. Just.

I drove up to Aberystwyth tonight to take Sean back for his lecture tomorrow. I checked the MetOffice reports, but after a bit of a snow shower around 1700 this afternoon, the only thing reported was “icy roads” – not normally a problem anywhere other than my street, so off we went. No problems and driving back was fine…until I hit Storey Arms. Well, I didn’t hit it – I’d slowed down a bit by that point. I knew that this was the worst part of my journey and the fingers of white creeping into my lane from the snow told me that it was a little chilly outside. I’m glad I did slow down, because after a little wobble at Storey Arms when I found the black ice, I slowed down a bit more. I was wrong about one thing though.

All the way down from the Storey Arms to the Beacons Reservoir the road was icy. I was crawling along at around 10mph when I started the descent down towards the Nant Ddu Lodge – and I’m glad I was because halfway down the hill, I saw blue lights. Letting the engine slow me down, I saw a police car pulled into one side with a car opposite him, halfway up a lamppost. The car in question had obviously visited both hedges before trying to climb the lamppost, but failed, leaving itself at approx 30 degrees. To be fair to the driver, at under 10mph, I was finding it challenging to keep the car going where I wanted it.

Carrying on down the road, I checked traction at the first Merthyr Roundabout and found that it had returned – looks like the salt’s done its job, I though. I was wrong.

I had a brief wobble over one of the bridges which I’d slowed down for, and so I kept my speed slow as I headed through the Merthyr area and down the next stretch of the A470 to Abercynon. I didn’t so much wobble as become aware that I had very little traction on the next piece, so I let the car drift down to a sedate 20mph and saw another RTC on the opposite carriageway, with another police car in attendance. Keeping the speed low, myself and another car made it down to Abercynon. Now, with the bad weather recently, the mountain road from Nelson has been closed, so I headed down the A470 towards Caerphilly. Keeping a good few hundred meters behind the car in front, we crossed the ice-covered viaduct at Abercynon and carried on towards Pontypridd – I was expecting the Trallwng corner to be bad – it’s an elevated section, banked and a very sharp corner. I was only doing 20mph so had plenty of time to see the police car with his lights on in the opposite carriageway waiting for the RTC and waving at me – presumably because I wasn’t driving like a loon.

The other car and I carried on down the A470 at a gentle pace of about 35mph, slowing down for the odd bridge – unlike the idiot in the white van that shot past us like we were stood still, wobbled precariously as he found the ice on the bridge up ahead and, having stabilised himself, carried on at a speed that was ridiculously dangerous for everyone on the road.

Whoever said you don’t need crampons in South Wales? Never mind the mountain, I almost whipped them out to get back to the house tonight. The car is at the bottom of the hill – I could see the ice shining like glass on the road as I approached and parked the car neatly out of the way. The walk up was interesting – going up a slope with little or no traction whilst hanging on to the fence must have been amusing to the cat who was sat watching me.

So, home safe. To bed for now, to see what joy tomorrow’s weather brings. I’ll be thinking of the lads and lasses that make up the three main emergency services who are out in the cold tonight as I cuddle up in my warm bed.

Tags: A470, Aberystwyth, Brecon Beacons, drive, driving, ice, road, sean, snow, Storey Arms, winter