Snowy 2005

Hi All,

I hope you're all OK and have been enjoying your beautiful snowy scenes and haven't been too disrupted or cold because of the snow. We've certainly been having fun.

We've worked out that we've now had snow in December (Christmas day), January, February and March as well. This is unheard of for us. We're used to maybe a day or two's light snow for a whole winter in Sussex and yet we've lost count of how many days we've woken up to white countryside here in Normandy. Mind you, Marie at the bar said this morning that it has been unusual to have so much snow around here.

Marie and I always have a coffee together on a Friday morning as I drop the boys off at school 150 metres away and then I have to wait 45 minutes before rejoining all the children for swimming. I help out getting them all undressed and dressed again in the changing rooms. It's quite a challenge when there's nearly 30 2-5 year olds!! So anyway it seems silly going home, so Marie and I put the world to rights and she's so sweet often she doesn't let me pay for my coffee.

Then after you get out of our property you have two choices as we are up on the side of a smallish valley. Up the steep lane to the top or down the steep lane to the village. On several days these were impassable too. The thing that's really hard to judge though is how the weather is further down in the village. Some days when there is 4 inches of snow at home and it's pretty treacherous, there's only a light dusting 2 miles away down in the village and on other days the village can be worse than at home. So our policy has been lets go for it and see what happens!!

We had already realised when we moved here that our position on the hillside could cause us some problems in the winter so we've just had to take precautions. We always keep the freezer and larder stocked up, make sure we have a stock of all animal foods and have a supply of water (in case the pipes freeze) and UHT milk (not that this is a problem as we have a dairy farm for a neighbour!) The only thing we've nearly run out of today is dishwasher tablets and I don't suppose I can really class that as a necessity!!

 

Anyway, back to snow. We've obviously been watching English television seeing what the winter has brought to you all. I think that the snow that Kent has had in the last few days has been the same snow cloud that we've been under. It's been amazing. We've actually been snowed in several times. Now, I don't mean that we've had anything deeper than England necessarily. It's just that our position makes it often impossible to get out. Our driveway is probably 70 metres long and steep uphill. The day before yesterday we only managed to get about 15 feet up it before wheel spinning to a halt. We tried both the van and the car but to no avail. So, over to plan B. We undid the fencing across the 'Le champs des Vaches' (the cow field!) and spun our way across there until we got stuck! I tried pushing, but then I'm a bit of a weakling. Simon managed to push us out of the rut and we were on our way.

Yesterday we managed to get the boys to school and then on our way home came to the stop sign in middle of the village. Now, in France you have to stop completely at a stop, irrelvant of whether there are any cars within a mile and the Gendarmes are really hot on it. They hide around corners (supposedly) and look to see if the tyres stop. Well the problem yesterday was that we tried to stop, but we couldn't!! So we merrily slid across the road towards the very solid looking, granite house opposite and despite the ABS brakes and Simons attempts to steer we only just managed to stop, with me pulling on the hand-brake as well in desperation. We looked at each other with a smile of relief and decided we really ought to just get home and stay there!!

The last photo is of March 3rd's blizzard!! 15 minutes before this the sky was blue and Archie and I were outside visiting our second snowman in the cow field!! Normally you can see around five miles into the distance but it seems to be about 500 metres!!

To those of you who've had enough of the snow...roll on spring. And for those of you who are still enjoying it, like us... long may it last!

Love to all

Sabina, Simon, Conor and Archie

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