We’ve had another bout of heavy snow, and this time I was prepared – as soon as I noticed snow had started falling, I moved my car onto flat ground so that I’d be able to get it out easily, because last time it snowed I was parked facing uphill on a steep incline and there was simply no way I could safely get my car out. Well, moving it worked and I was able to get out no problem.
Whilst driving around I was very surprised to see that a lot of people don’t seem to have any idea how to drive in slippery conditions. While I don’t profess to be any kind of driving expert, I do know the correct way to drive under these conditions. The BBC aren’t particularly helping by repeatedly warning everyone not to go out and not providing particularly useful advice for when you do go out.
I don’t agree with the current trend of “Severe weather warnings” on the news pretty much every day; if it’s not snow it’s floods, or strong winds. In summer they issue a “Severe weather warning” for what we used to call “a lovely summer’s day” – it’s getting stupid, to quote Clarkson: “I know when I am hot!”. It’s just another way to make us afraid of being alive. It reminds me of the Mitchell and Webb sketch of a post-apocalyptic gameshow where the viewers are constantly reminded not to go outside due to some undisclosed danger. Watching the weather report these days, they might as well just say “It’s fuckin’ scary out there, don’t leave your house!” and be done with it. Get some fucking balls people!
In my opinion, particularly during snow and ice, we should be encouraged to go outside, because if more people were to go outside; that’s more people shoveling ice off the road, more tyres wearing the ice off, more cars generating heat and more people around to help dig you out if you get stuck etc. It would generally result in much safer conditions for all. If everybody’s locked in their homes, the roads really will be dangerous for the few brave souls who do venture out.
Have a read of the BBC’s advice for drivers – they bang on about checking your car to make sure there’s enough fuel and that everything’s working, but these are the kinds of checks that you should do every time you get in the car anyway. They might as well be saying duck and cover. The two most important pieces of advice are obscured down the bottom and aren’t explained clearly. Let me clarify this for any of you who do not know:
SELECT A HIGHER GEAR THAN YOU WOULD NORMALLY AND KEEP ENGINE REVS LOW – PULLING AWAY IN 2ND GEAR IS OFTEN A GOOD IDEA – IT IS BETTER TO STALL THAN SPIN YOUR WHEELS
BE VERY GENTLE WITH ALL THE CONTROLS, PARTICULARLY THE BRAKE AND ACCELERATOR – SMALL GENTLE MOVEMENTS ARE KEY
MAINTAIN A STEADY SPEED, DO NOT CRAWL ALONG AT 5 MILES AN HOUR, BUT KEEP YOUR SPEED DOWN AND ALLOW PLENTY OF STOPPING DISTANCE
Judging by the number of people I watched spinning their wheels and revving their engines in 1st, it’s amazing how many people aren’t aware of these very basic tips. Of course you should bring a shovel and plenty of supplies as well, I also took a couple of old pieces of carpet to help me get out if I got stuck, but your goal should be not to get stuck in the first place and avoid making other people get stuck at all costs! The BBC’s entire section on “Before you leave” should be condensed into “check your car over paying particular attention to the tyres, bring lots of supplies (including fuel), warm clothes and a shovel to help get out if you get stuck” – to be honest this should be common sense. The most important advice that may not be common sense to a lot of people; ie, ‘use high gears’ is buried right the way down at the bottom of the page. No good!
I also had the opportunity to try out a tip that I picked up from the Arctic special of top gear – if you’re stuck, particularly on a hill facing upwards; try gently rocking backwards and forwards on the clutch (keeping engine revs low). It works, very well in fact; so well that once I’d got my car out from its parking space by clearing the snow with a shovel, I was able to drive around quite happily even on some quite treacherous roads without having to get out of the car and use the shovel even once.
It will make me very angry if you’re in front of me going uphill and driving very slowly – in order to keep traction going uphill you need to maintain a certain amount of speed and momentum; while you may feel safer driving very slowly, I will be seriously pissed off if I lose traction because of your over-paranoid driving. It is much safer and easier to go up a hill at 25mph in 4th or 5th than it is at 5mph in 2nd.
And while we’re on the subject of bad drivers – I know that driving in the snow is hard and requires a lot of concentration, but that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to stop indicating, in fact it makes indication all the more important because you have to start slowing down so far in advance of the turns. Several times yesterday drivers in front of me slowed down with no warning – in normal conditions I’ll let this slide, but in the snow doing so will provoke an angry honk of my horn. If you are not capable of driving without endangering the safety of other road users, you should not be on the road.
Before I move on to talking about my actual trip to Cuckmere Haven, I’d like to add one final tip of my own; If you find yourself gradually sliding backwards down a hill as I did when I moved my car onto flatter ground prior to the really heavy snowfall; remember that in most front-wheel drive cars the foot brake only brakes the front wheels and the hand brake only brakes the rear wheels – you can therefore double the amount of braking traction that you have by applying both the foot brake and the hand brake, in effect giving you four-wheel braking. This should only be attempted if you have already lost traction and are unable to regain it by lifting and re-applying the foot brake (or, if you have ABS and you can feel the ABS trying to work but failing). Using both brakes together like this saved me from bumping the neighbors car so I’m very thankful that I thought of it in time.
The UK's 'Big Freeze'
Since the start of what people seem to be calling ‘The big freeze’ (we’ve had snow on and off since the new year and there’s been a layer of snow on the ground pretty much constantly since then); I’ve been itching to get out to Cuckmere Haven and take some photographs of the snow – it’s not an opportunity you get very often so I want to take advantage of it. The first time it snowed unfortunately I’d left my car parked facing uphill on my road (which is actually a very steep gradient), I tried three days running and there was simply no way I could safely get it out until the snow melted. I was pretty disappointed because snow in England is normally a once-a-year event so I figured I’d missed it. Nevertheless, I decided that from now on in winter I always park facing downhill.
Fortunately we did get a 2 day gap in the snow long enough for it to melt and me to turn my car around. Then when I noticed it starting to snow again I immediately got in my car and moved it on to flat ground – at this point it had been snowing less than an hour and there was only a centimeter or so of snow on the ground. I figured it would be safe to drive up my road – not so, this is when I ended up sliding backwards down a hill. I now know that even in the slightest amount of snow or ice; my road is completely impassable to a 2-wheel-drive car, in the uphill direction at least – I think I probably would’ve been able to safely slide down it.
So anyway, I managed to get my car onto flat ground and parked safely. I was on double-yellows, but I figure when it’s snowing so badly you can’t see the lines and the place you would normally park is completely impassable, all parking nazi rules are off and you park wherever it is safe to do so. Apparently everyone else agrees with me because when I returned to my car every space on the double-yellows around me was full too and there was no ticket on my car.
I knew that the most dangerous parts of the journey to Cuckmere Haven would be the beginning and the very end. I decided that the safest route to take would be the coast road (the A259) – while it’s a lesser road than the A27 and I would normally go via the A27, taking the A27 route requires either using a small country road to get from the A27 to the coast (which normally I thoroughly enjoy driving on, but probably would’ve been impassable, or at least very dangerous in the snow), or the safer option: driving past Cuckmere Haven all the way to Eastbourne, then all the way through Eastbourne to the coast, and then back the other way again on the coast road. I figured the prospect of getting stuck somewhere in Eastbourne probably outweighed the prospect of getting stuck somewhere along the coast road, so it was safer and easier to just to straight to Cuckmere Haven on the A259.
Normally I avoid the A259 because it goes via Newhaven and I hate Newhaven for many reasons. The main one being that it causes a severe bottleneck every time a boat goes past – there’s a moving bridge that seems to spend more time closed to traffic than open. Why they can’t just build a proper permanent bridge that’s high enough for boats to go under, I don’t understand. However, this time the problem caused by newhaven was nothing to do with bridges or boats, it was the idiot drivers.
On the A259 just before you enter Newhaven from the Brighton direction there’s a gentle uphill gradient with a 40mph speed limit which then levels off and goes into a slightly steeper downhill gradient as you enter Newhaven town heading towards the docks. For some reason everyone in Newhaven felt the need to drive around at 5mph. This isn’t such a problem when you’re going downhill, but when the pussies going really slowly down the downhill bit of the road is causing a tailback that stretches into the uphill bit, then it is a problem. At 5mph you have virtually no momentum and it’s consequently very easy to lose traction. That kept happening, not only to me but to pretty much everyone in a 2-wheel drive car, when you add to that the fact that people don’t know how to do hill starts in slippery conditions (ie, use second gear) traffic was moving very slowly. The people in 4WDs were understandably quite pissed off and I saw at least two people going on to the wrong side of the road to go around the long line of 2-wheel-drive cars struggling to get up the hill. This is dangerous, and it’s caused by people going too slowly. If you don’t have the balls to maintain a decent speed in the snow, do us all a favour and stay off the roads before you cause a fucking accident. If you’re going at less than half the speed limit, that is probably dangerously slow, even in ice.
Anyway, when I came out the other side of Newhaven the idiocy mostly subsided and I had a very pleasurable drive the rest of the way to Cuckmere Haven. I was right about the beginning and the end being the most dangerous bits – getting from where I’d parked to the one-way system was a little slippery (although I’d deliberately parked on a main road not far from the centre of town), once on the one-way system conditions were fine and I felt confident driving around at my normal speed (allowing slightly greater stopping distances). Similarly, the conditions on the coast road were perfectly safe, and I felt confident at, or slightly below the speed limit. I resisted the temptation to exceed the speed limit in certain places as I would normally do, even though I think it would have been safe to do so – there’s no point taking undue risks.
When I got to Cuckmere Haven there were a couple of cars in the visitor centre car park, but they had obviously been there since before the snow fell. I was the only one to have driven there in the snow, it looked like a couple of cars had pulled into the car park to turn around but not stopped, or if they had stopped they’d gone by the time I’d got there. My automatic reaction was to drive over to my normal spot on the far side of the car park, but upon parking there I changed my mind and decided it was probably unwise to put a few hundred yards of untouched snow between myself and the main road. I therefore decided to move my car to the closest I could reasonably leave it to the car park entrance without actually blocking it. I also parked under a tree where the snow was thinnest so that if I did get stuck, I hopefully wouldn’t have to do too much shovelling.
My car in the visitor centre car park
The way I feel about my car now is like the guys on Top Gear describe after one of their road-trips in shit cars. I know my car’s a pile of junk: it didn’t cost much, it’s got a puny engine, doesn’t have any features like power steering, central locking, airbags or ABS and now it won’t start unless you know the correct technique, there’s a hole where the glove box used to be and what little power it did have is gone. But even so, you can sense that it just wants to keep going. Despite all its faults, it’s never let me down when I’ve needed it – the only time I’ve ever had to call out the AA was when Lisa locked the bloody key in it, the only time it’s failed to start completely was when I left the light on and ran the battery down, the car itself has never let me down and for that I love it.
I attribute most of that reliability to the fact that I made a very wise choice about which car to buy – Volkswagen are known for their reliability, and I bought exactly the right model for my price range. I couldn’t have made a better choice and I’m very smug about it 
– I should probably attribute at least some of this choice to Jezz – it was him that helped me pick the car and drove me to pick it up – some of the thanks should probably also go to Jezz’s dad who’s been a VW man all his life and probably indirectly influenced my choice to buy a Polo. I’ve been very happy with my Polo and will definitely buy a Volkswagen again, I’d quite like to upgrade to a Golf, and that may in fact be my next car.
I’ve always really loved and enjoyed driving, but it wasn’t until my trip to Cuckmere Haven in the snow that I realised I actually love my car as well. At first I found it hard to feel any attachment to a car which I know to not be particularly good, but after driving it for a year I’m definitely very attached. I know that its reliability is going to come to an end pretty soon and I’m going to be forced to replace it and I’m going to be sad to see the back of this car.
Here’s a picture of MOF all on its own at the Hill Barn car park. Notice the 4 tyre tracks in the snow rather than the usual 2. That’s because I was in a controlled 4-wheel drift when I parked, so each wheel was leaving its own track. It’s not often you get the opportunity to pull off stunts like that in public places without it being dangerous. Fun stuff 
My car in the Hill Barn car park
I had planned to leave the car in the visitor centre car park and go to each location on foot, but after walking to the Foxhole campsite and taking the photos I wanted there, it would’ve been something like 3 or 4 miles walking in heavy snow to get to the coastguard cottages where I wanted to take the next set of photos. I was already starting to get a headache from the cold so I decided that was probably unwise and that I’d be better off risking the drive.
I knew it would be quite a risky drive up to the Hill Barn car park – the visitor centre car park is literally just off the A259 so even if I’d got stuck there it wouldn’t have taken too much work to clear the snow with my shovel and regain traction using the bits of carpet I’d bought. The Hill Barn car park is a completely different matter however, it’s tucked away up the back of Seaford, and there’s quite a steep track made of concrete slabs up to the car park itself which I knew wouldn’t have had many cars pass over it since the snow, there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to get up there at all and would get properly stuck in the process of trying.
Driving up that track there was a rather scary moment when I thought I was gonna lose it, I was in 4th and could feel the car loosing speed and beginning to splutter because 4th is really too high for my car to get up that hill with the engine as fucked as it is, but I knew that changing down to third there was a good chance of spinning the wheels and going sliding back down the hill – it was a delicate balancing act between not stalling the car, not losing traction and maintaining enough speed to actually get up the hill. I think I shifted down to 3rd at exactly the right time – I could literally feel that I was right at the edge of the capabilities of my car – if I’d downshifted any earlier I’d have spun the wheels, any later and I’d have stalled, neither of which would’ve been good at this particular moment. I was so happy when I got to the top that I had to execute a little drift manouver to celebrate.
The walk from Hill Barn down to the coastguard cottages was absolutely bleak – up on the top of the cliff the winds were much stronger and the snow was being driven towards me. A lot of the time the snow was coming down at close to 90 degrees – you can see this in the photos because the snow is settled on the side of things rather than the top, this is particularly apparent on benches and signposts. At Cuckmere Haven it’s not just the trees that are sideways, the snow is too!
The rescue helecopter went past and hovered literally a couple of meters away from me for a minute or so, probably wondering what the fuck I was doing and whether I was trying to kill myself heh. Annoyingly, just as I was about to take a photo of them, they flew away – just like fucking birds.
That reminds me, I was also gonna mention that I nearly got an amazing photo of a robin sitting in a snow-covered tree, except for the fact that I had my wide-angle lens on (as I always do) and needed to change to the telephoto in order to make the picture. This keeps happening – I never use the telephoto, except for when I see an animal that I want to photograph, at which point I struggle to switch lenses as quickly and quietly as possible, and by the time I’ve put the camera to my eye, I’m just quick enough to catch a glimpse of the damned animal scampering or flying away. I therefore conclude that a telephoto lens is basically useless to a landscape photographer unless you can afford to have two camera bodies and carry them both around with you the whole time. Annoying!
Anyway, by the time I got down to the coastguard cottages, the cold was really starting to bite, fortunately the Thermos of tea I’d bought with me was still hot despite having been dropped in the snow. I snapped the pictures I wanted as quickly as possible and hurridly returned to the car. I was going to go via Hope Gap, but decided there was a real chance this might’ve finished me off – Hope Gap is the best location for taking pictures of the full set of Seven Sisters, but the snow was so heavy that you could only barely make out Haven Brow let alone the rest of the Seven Sisters, the snowy cliff pictures will have to wait for another time.
Getting back down the track from Hill Barn was a lot easier than getting up it, although the amount of speed that I built-up was rather alarming. I didn’t dare try going down in 3rd or braking very heavily for risk losing front-wheel traction, and I managed to maintain good traction all the way down, but I must’ve been doing a good 45mph by the time I got to the bottom which was really quite scary. I suppose the other approach I could’ve tried would have been to crawl down as slowly as possible in 2nd, but that’s not really my style and I don’t really think it would’ve been much safer, I’d rather be going quickly and have a good degree of control over the car than be going slowly and sliding all over the place. However, one false move and that could’ve ended quite badly.
While I would encourage people to go out and drive during the snow, I wouldn’t really encourage the same level of brazen disregard for the risks of getting stuck in a snow drift that I have myself. Stick to main roads and don’t put yourself in any unnecessary danger. Do as I say, not as I do 
I do consider myself a fairly safe and accomplished driver (considering I’ve only had my license for 1 year). I failed my test 3 times because I get very nervous under test conditions and that affects my ability to drive quite significantly – I was good enough to pass on the first attempt, I just didn’t. I’ve consequently had a lot more professional tuition than most people, and more than I really needed. I’ve also done a hell of a lot of driving since passing my test, as much as I can afford to do really – I just love driving. I’ve also had some low-friction tuition and driven a pretty wide variety of cars including front, rear and 4-wheel drive which has enabled me to be pretty confident driving in the snow. Once you have that confidence, driving in snow is actually bloody fun I had a great time sliding around.
Here you can see a selection of my Cuckmere Haven snow images:
Fence into frozen lake
Hill Barn
Bench and the coastguard cottages
