Last night we drove home from my Mum’s (in Rossendale, Lancashire) to Witney Oxfordshire and there’s pretty much the same amount of snow in both places but the roads ‘down south’ were utter poo! The M40 is down to 2 lanes and covered in ice as is the A34 and A40!! Do Oxfordshire not use gritters and snow plows?!

Were there any temperature differences? Snow fall at the same time? Previous conditions the same?

JEngledow… well as Witney residents we are pioneers for the big society and should be out ploughing and gritting with our bikes.

Have you tried to make it anywhere this morning?

From today’s Guardian “The AA was expecting a final total of 14,000 incidents today instead of the normal 7,500, with patrols reporting a lack of grit on some main routes, especially along the M40 in Warwickshire and Oxfordshire”

Bascially they didn’t grit enough. V.poor.

No, I’m working from home today (I’m based in Evesham and don’t fancy Fish Hill!) but will go for a wander later as we’ve no food in (except for the Christmas cake my Mum baked us). My wifes gonna try and get the bus to the JR as she can’t get her car off the drive. How are you getting on Yeti?

I still can’t beleive how different the roads are down here compared with the North 🙄

It might have been gritted and then snowed on top, which is a pointless waste of grit!

Grit doesnt work below a certain temp, or when the amount of snow falling exceeds a certain amount.

Yeah not bad, think working from home is the best option today. My car is still at work so I’m contemplating riding in… but not that seriously. Had a walk into town yesterday… Sainsbury’s car park looks like it’s been gritted, that’s about it!

Gritting should be banned. All roads should be left snow covered – it makes driving (the right car) so much more fun. Fiesta Econetic with skinny tyres anyone?

How I wish I still had my Escorts

A34 was completely shut on Sat due to weather and people abandoning cars think oxon had it pretty bad this time compared to rest of country.

Saturday snowfall, not much traffic on M40 at a weekend, lots and lots of snow. Without traffic gritting is less effective.

so what you are saying is that you were a grizeled old norverner and as soon as you went south of brum, you turned into a shandy drinking nancy that cant drive and blames the council?

so what you are saying is that you were a grizeled old norverner and as soon as you went south of brum, you turned into a shandy drinking nancy that cant drive and blames the council?

Exactly, I’ve never seen it put so eloquently!! 😆

I was stuck on the M5 for over 5hrs on Saturday. Didn’t even move enough to get to a junction to get off in that time. I don’t know why it takes them longer than that to move a couple of lorries out of the way. Ridiculous.

Hailing from practically snow-less South Staffs, I saw the “carnage” on the motorways on the news. The arial shots showed miles of traffic behind a slightly skew-wiffed truck. Yet it looked like there was plenty of room to get round the truck, but for the flouro-shod plod/highways bod stood in the way. Do they honestly stop the whole lot because one vehicle cant move ?

I commented yesterday how the roads in the Aylesbury Vale hadn’t seemed to have had any work on them all of Sunday.

In fact we saw a snowplough with his blade lifted passing near us – on a rutted snowy road…

Takisawa – Was it the lorry on the M25 you saw on the news? It was carrying LPG so probably better to be a bit cautious than have a massive explosion a couple of feet from people in their cars.

The A34 and M40 were bad as the snow came down quickly and heavily so unlikey that snow plough/gritters would have been able to cover the whole area in time. Then, when a lorry or 2 jack-knife the traffic comes to a halt so the snow settles and the snow ploughs/gritters can’t get through which then makes it worse. Unless you can magic traffic off the roads as soon as something happens, then you are always going to have issues like this.

What they could do is ban lorries and coaches from moving when it snows (like they did in Northern France yesterday), but then people would complain that the shops are empty and people on the coaches could not get where they wanted to go.

There will always be people complaining and blaming someone else about something – it appears to be human nature

I got stuck in a tailback behind a jack-knifed lorry last Monday on the M4. The Highways agency blokes were waving people past it on both sides (it was in the middle lane).

There were cars littered everywhere at the side of the M40 when, yesterday, I drove out from Bicester back to Godalming. I tried on Saturday afternoon but the A41 out to the M40 was bad enough so stayed with friends locally! The first 10 miles where a single lane cleared from traffic movement, then it seemed to get clear and once past High Wycombe it was just a normal damp motorway.

What did make me chuckle was the snowman built on top of the central crash barrier.