Oban’s snow arrived on Saturday: 5 inches in an hour! Mayhem ensued: cars abandoned in town as they couldn’t get up hills. Argyll Square roundabout closed for about 3 hours as a lorry jack-knifed across the road.
D, Meg and I: oblivious as we had taken off to Kinloch and Fort William late morning. It was only as we were trying to pass through Connel on our way back home in the evening we realized how off guard many of us were. As the car in front of us slid back towards us as he failed to climb the hill, we quickly, well as quickly as we safely could, reversed down the hill again.
The forecast had said there would be heavy snow and I had dismissed this from my head as Oban never gets heavy snow…
While we were considering what best to do, a snow plough (which we had past at Barcaldine going in the opposite direction) came towards us. All the cars which were by then stationary managed to get on to the same side of the road and we fell in behind the snow plough.
Two hours it took us to drive this last 6 miles as the snow plough driver periodically jumped out her cab, retrieved her shovel from a cubbyhole and helped any stranded motorists who were trying to dig themselves out. She then spread extra grit to get them out and into the convoy. Now that’s what I call service. There was one point when all the cars which had been behind me disappeared. The snow plough driver stopped to talk to the police who were also out with shovels. As we past the police I said to them that there had been a convoy behind me so cars must have ground to a halt again. They were on the case they said! The snow plough turned round once we were in central Oban and we carried on through to the hospital where we abandoned our car as we didn’t think we would get into Soroba with it – correct assumption as it turned out.
We walked up the road looking like refugees with an assortment of bags.
As with many adventures, it was great fun once we knew we were safe!
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